Acute Stroke Diagnosis and Monitoring-Experiences from European Stroke Units.

Abstract

Stroke is an emergency', this sentence is more and more recognized by the public as well as amongst patients at high risk for stroke, their families and physicians in hospitals.In Europe the increasing awareness started in the early 1990s when the German Stroke Foundation first established a concept of specific semi-intensive-care units for stroke patients to be diagnosed, monitored and treated immediately after onset of symptoms.Along with the evidence-based knowledge about the effectiveness of rtPA treatment of ischemic stroke within 3 hours, the former concept of stroke units which had been devel-