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Validity of a computerised five-level emergency triage system for patients with acute ischaemic stroke
Emergency Medicine Journal, 07/06/2012
Sung SF et al. – Acuity measured by the computerised Taiwan Triage and Acuity Scale (TTAS) demonstrated good validity in facilitating acute care of stroke patients with special regard to thrombolytic therapy.
Methods- The authors retrospectively reviewed all admitted patients with a discharge diagnosis of acute ischaemic stroke from January 2010 to September 2011.
- Presenting complaints, activation of code stroke protocol, eligibility of intravenous tissue plasminogen activator treatment, time from ED arrival to treatment, and outcome at discharge were compared by the five–level triage system.
- Of 706 enrolled patients (level 1, 55; level 2, 455; level 3, 192; level 4, 4; level 5, 0), there were 412 (58.4%) men and 294 women (41.6%), with a mean age of 69.4 years.
- The initial stroke severity, time from onset to arrival, time from arrival to imaging, proportion of patients for whom code stroke protocol was activated, length of hospital stay, and good functional outcome at discharge correlated with TTAS levels.
- A total of 84 patients were thrombolysis candidates, and 98.8% of them were designated as either level 1 or level 2.
- For those treated with thrombolytic therapy (n=47), the time from arrival to thrombolysis was not significantly different between TTAS level 1 and 2.
