Efficacy of Emergency Room Skip Strategy in Patients Transferred for Mechanical Thrombectomy

OBJECTIVE: Time to recanalization is directly linked to cerebral infarction prognosis. However, patients transferred from another hospital take longer to arrive than those transported directly. To minimize time to recanalization, the emergency room (ER) skip strategy for hospital transfers was executed and reviewed. METHODS: From April 2019, patients transferred from another hospital for mechanical thrombectomy were carried into the angio-suite using emergency service stretchers. Results for these patients (ER skip group) were compared with those for patients transported directly to our hospital (Direct group). RESULTS: Among 108 cases in 32 months, 99 patients (91.7%) had major cerebral artery occlusion and underwent endovascular treatment. No differences in age, baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, effective recanalization rate, or proportion of posterior circulation cases were seen between groups. The ER skip group (26 patients) showed significantly longer median time from onset to arrival (240 vs. 120 min; p = 0.0001) and significantly shorter median time from arrival to groin puncture (11 vs. 69 min; p = 0.0000). No significant differences were evident in time from groin puncture to recanalization (39 vs. 45 min), time from onset to recanalization (298 vs. 244 min), or rate of modified Rankin Scale score 0–2 after 90 days (42.3% vs. 32.9%). Median time from alarm to recanalization (266 vs. 176 min; p = 0.0001) was significantly longer in the ER skip group. Door-to-puncture (DTP) time for the Direct group gradually fell as the number of cases increased, reaching 40 min by the end of study period. In contrast, DTP time for the ER skip group remained extremely short and did not change further. The proportion of patients who underwent both CT and MRI before endovascular treatment was significantly lower in the Direct group (30.1%) than in the ER skip group (57.7%). In the ER skip group, median length of stay in the primary hospital was 119 min, and the median duration of interhospital transfer was 16 min. CONCLUSION: The ER skip strategy for patients transferred with large vessel occlusion achieved favorable outcomes comparable to that for direct transport cases. Direct transport to a thrombectomy-capable stroke center remains ideal, however, because the time to intervention is improving for direct transport cases each year.