Reduced Workflow Times for Reperfusion Therapy After Acute Ischemic Stroke Using a Visual Task Management Application

Reperfusion therapy for acute ischemic stroke efficacy is highly time dependent; therefore, stroke centers are required to further reduce the delays from hospital arrival to treatment efficiently. We developed a visual task management application, Task Calculation Stroke (Task Calc. Stroke: TCS), to facilitate hospital acute ischemic stroke treatment by supporting parallel staff task completion. We evaluated TCS for the reduction of reperfusion therapy delays and improvement of clinical outcomes.

In this multicenter cohort study, patients were directly admitted to 4 comprehensive stroke centers in Japan and given intravenous tissue plasminogen activator and/or mechanical thrombectomy from June 2018 to December 2020. The research team visited each facility and instructed the staff on TCS use for acute ischemic stroke (training stage), after which the staff used TCS independently (TCS stage). We then compared door-to-needle time for intravenous tissue plasminogen activator, door-to-puncture time for mechanical thrombectomy, and clinical outcomes at discharge according to the modified Rankin Scale among patients treated before training (original stage), during the training stage, or the TCS stage.

During the study period, 316 patients with acute ischemic stroke received reperfusion therapy; of these, 246 received intravenous tissue plasminogen activator and 162 mechanical thrombectomy (including 92 receiving both the treatments). The mean door-to-needle time was significantly reduced from 58.0 minutes in the original stage to 54.6 minutes in the training stage (P=0.049) and 47.8 minutes in the TCS stage (P<0.001). The door-to-puncture time did not change during the training stage; however, in the TCS stage, it significantly reduced from 93.8 minutes in the original stage to 88.5 minutes (P=0.004). The distribution of modified Rankin Scale scores at discharge significantly shifted favorably at the TCS stage (P=0.003).

In this study, TCS application could reduce workflow time for reperfusion therapy and might have led to improved clinical outcomes.