Is It Acute Stroke or Not? - A Prospective Observational Study from a Multidisciplinary Emergency Department

Background: Acute stroke is a medical emergency with various clinical presentations. Since the introduction of systemic thrombolytic treatment, stroke diagnosis has been made quickly and with great caution, and the trend of rapid presentation at hospitals has increased. Methods: In our multidisciplinary Emergency Department, we prospectively collected and analysed data of consecutive patients presenting with suspected acute stroke (SAS) or transient ischemic attack (TIA). Results: Four hundred ten patients (200 men, mean age 68 ± 16, range 17-93 years) with SAS were admitted of which 105 were prehospitally announced as within the time-window for thrombolytic treatment (TW). Diagnosis of acute stroke/TIA was retained in 147 (35.9%). The initially reported TW