Stroke patients in Scotland are being put at risk as urgent care struggles to recover post pandemic, according .
A new report has found that the number of people receiving all critical care in time has dropped below 60 per cent, leaving many at greater risk of disability and death.
Access to the appropriate medication, known as thrombolysis, is considered one of the best ways of improving the chance of recovering from a stroke.
However, the time taken to offer treatment to patients has remained at “already unhappy levels”, said John Watson, associate director Scotland for the Stroke Association.
“We can’t go on like this,” Allan Cowie, interim chief executive of the charity Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland, said to The Times. “Scottish government needs to act to prevent this state of crisis management becoming a permanent feature of stroke care.”
Stroke is the leading cause of severe disability in those over 18 in Scotland and according to the Scottish Stroke Care Audit, about 15,000 adults suffer a stroke each year.
The recent report published by Public Health Scotland highlighted that care was unlikely to improve substantially until the health service recovers from the pandemic.
Although over the past ten years stroke cases have decreased by 21 per cent, the chances of patients receiving a brain scan within 12 hours can vary across Scotland with NHS Forth Valley seeing the longest delays to thrombolysis at 196 minutes compared with 122 minutes in NHS Tayside.
“Despite the continued and unprecedented challenges presented by the pandemic, this report highlights areas where a high level of care is provided for stroke patients, including improvements in the number of patients who receive brain imaging within 12 hours of arrival to hospital,” a spokeswoman for the Scottish government told The Times.
“We recognise that there are areas within stroke care that have proven particularly challenging and we are committed to continued improvement.”
