Stroke patients admitted to the hospital on weekends are slightly more likely to die compared to stroke patients admitted on weekdays, regardless of the severity of the stroke, according to a Canadian study published by the American Academy of Neurology.
"We wanted to test whether the severity of strokes on weekends compared to weekdays would account for lower survival rates on the weekends," says Moira K. Kapral, MD, of the University of Toronto in Ontario. Kapral was with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Ontario when the research was done. "Our results suggest that stroke severity is not necessarily the reason for this discrepancy."
Researchers analyzed five years of data from the Canadian Stroke Network on 20,657 patients with acute stroke from 11 stroke centers in Ontario. Only the first stroke a person experienced was included in the study. The study was published in the Nov. 2 issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the AAN.
People with moderate to severe stroke were just as likely to be admitted to the hospital on weekends and weekdays, but those with mild stroke were less likely to be admitted on weekends in the study. Those who were seen on weekends were slightly older, more likely to be taken by ambulance and experienced a shorter time from the onset of stroke symptoms to hospital arrival on average, the study shows.
Seven days after a stroke, people seen on weekends had an 8.1% risk of dying compared to a 7% risk of dying for those seen on weekdays. The results stayed the same regardless of age, gender, stroke severity, other medical conditions and the use of blood clot-busting medications. "Stroke is not the only condition in which lower survival rates have been linked for people admitted to hospitals on the weekends. The reason for the differences in rates could be due to hospital staffing, limited access to specialists and procedures done outside of regular hours," Kapral says. "More research needs to be done on why the rates are different so that stroke victims can have the best possible chance of surviving."
The study found no differences in the quality of stroke care, including brain scans and admission time, between weekends and weekdays.
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John Commins is a content specialist and online news editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.