[Cerebrovascular emergency units]

The first cerebrovascular emergency units were created at the end of the 1970s. Their organisation now varies greatly from one hospital to another, ranging from units equipped with intensive care facilities to the simple distinction of a team devoted to the management of this disease. Their objective is to reduce the mortality and residual handicap. They appear to achieve this objective, probably essentially because of the prevention and treatment of complications. They also have other advantages, more difficult to evaluate, attributable to the skills of the multidisciplinary team: better diagnosis, prognosis, better medical and social organisation of the patient's future in collaboration with his or her family. These centres improve the efficacy of health care systems, probably without any major increase in costs. These centres are therefore a special site for clinical research into the pathophysiology and hospital epidemiology, but especially for therapeutic trials in acute cerebral vascular accident, as a number of potentially effective molecules are available whose efficacy needs to be evaluated.