Stroke is a leading cause of death. Stroke care is limited by the availability of specialized medical professionals. In this post, we describe a physician-led stroke unit model established at Baptist Christian Hospital (BCH) in Assam, India. Enabled with qER, Qure’s AI driven automated CT Brain interpretation tool, BCH can quickly and easily determine next steps in terms of treatment and examine the implications for clinical outcomes.
Across the world, Stroke is a leading cause of death, second only to ischemic heart disease. According to the the World Stroke Organization (WSO), 13.7 million new strokes occur each year and there are about 80 million stroke survivors globally. In India as per the Health of the Nation’s State Report we see an incidence rate of 119 to 152/100000, and has a case fatality rate of 19 to 42% across the country.
Catering to tea plantation workers in and around the town of Tezpur, the Baptist Christian Hospital, Tezpur (BCH) is a 130-bed secondary care hospital in the North eastern state of Assam in India. This hospital is a unit of the Emmanuel Hospital Association, New Delhi. From humble beginnings, offering basic dispensary services, the hospital grew to become one of the best healthcare providers in Assam, being heavily involved in academic and research work at both national and international levels. Nestled below the Himalayas, interspersed with large tea plantations, Assamese indigenous population and tea garden workers showcase a prevalence of hypertension, the largest single risk factor of stroke, reportedly between 33% to 60.8%. Anecdotal reports and hospital-based studies indicate a huge burden of stroke in Assam - a significant portion of which is addressed by Baptist Hospital. Recent study showed that hemorrhagic strokes account for close to 50% of the cases here, compared to only about 20% of the strokes in the rest of India.
Challenges in Stroke Care
One of the biggest obstacles in Stroke Care is the lack of awareness of stroke symptoms and the late arrival of the patient, often at smaller peripheral hospitals, which are not equipped with the necessary scanning facilities and the specialists, leading to a delay in effective treatment. The doctors and nurses of the Stroke Unit at BCH, Tezpur were trained online by specialist neurologists, who in turn trained the rest of the team on a protocol that included Stroke Clinical Assessment, monitoring of risk factors & vital parameters, and other supportive measures like management of Swallow assessment in addition to starting the rehabilitation process & advising on long term care at home. A study done at Tezpur indicated that post establishment of Stroke Unit, there was significant improvement in the quality of life along with reduction in deaths compared to the pre-Stroke Unit phase. This is a crucial development in Stroke care especially in the low and middle income countries(LMIC) like India, to strengthen the peripheral smaller hospitals which lack specialists and are almost always the first stop for patients in emergencies like Stroke.
