Epidemiology of acute stroke presentations to an emergency ambulance service

Stroke is a devastating condition with significant societal and personal costs. Attempts to improve outcomes have increasingly focussed on improvements in prehospital care of these patients. This study aims to provide an epidemiologic profile of stroke presentations to an ambulance service. A descriptive quantitative analysis of linked administrative and clinical patient data across prehospital, hospital, and death records from a two-year period (2016–2017), was used to profile the acute stroke cohort transported by ambulance in Queensland, Australia. The epidemiologic profile of patients and sub-type of stroke is presented. There were 17,603 presentations of suspected acute stroke in Queensland during the study period amongst 2,078,140 ambulance responses. A total of 11,578 patients had a confirmed diagnosis of stroke at the time of their final discharge. Of this population 49.8% suffered an Acute Ischaemic Stroke, 12.9% had intracerebral haemorrhage, 4.5% had subarachnoid haemorrhage and 32.8% were transient ischaemic attack. Of those with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) 9.2% were due to a large vessel occlusion. The three-month stroke related fatality rate was 10%. This study demonstrated a lower annual presentation rate of stroke, to an emergency ambulance service, than would be expected based on population studies while the overall mortality rate amongst this population was higher. The reasons for these differences warrant further investigation.