Pre-hospital and hospital emergency procedures in stroke

The authors have discussed the principles of prehospi-tal and hospital procedure in stroke. They have emphasized that, in the pre-hospital period, it is extremely important to notify the emergency services of the occurrence of any disturbing symp-toms in order to undertake the rescue action and transport the patient to a previously notified specialist centre as quickly as possible and to perform appropriate laboratory and imaging di-agnostics and implement treatment. The hospital treatment will be significantly accelerated if the patient has been brought by an ambulance and the hospital has been informed in advance. The patient's examination at the Hospital Emergency Ward should not exceed 10 minutes. The next step is to order an urgent CT scan, which should be performed no later than 25 minutes after the patient is admitted to Emergency Ward and the testing result should be available up to 45 minutes. Other imaging tests that will help in differential diagnosis include cerebral angiography and chest X-ray.