Improving Door-to-Needle Times

Improving Door-to-Needle Times for Acute Ischemic Stroke

Faster treatment with intravenous alteplase (tissue-type plasminogen activator) results in better outcomes. Although the benchmark door-to-needle time (DTN) has been set at 60 minutes, many centers have been able to exceed this benchmark with median times from 20 to 51 minutes. These local efforts have been supported by national and international efforts to reduce DTN time. For example, the Ame...

Improving door to needle times with nurse initiated thrombolysis.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of nurse initiated thrombolysis on door to needle time (the interval between arriving at the hospital and starting thrombolytic treatment) in patients with acute myocardial infarction. DESIGN Comparison of door to needle times before and after the employment of nurses trained and approved to initiate thrombolysis without prescription by a doctor but with a pro...

Door-to-Needle Times: Let's Not Leave Smaller Hospitals Behind.

Improving door-to-needle times: a single center validation of the target stroke hypothesis.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE National guidelines recommend imaging within 25 minutes of emergency department arrival and intravenous tissue-type plasminogen activator within 60 minutes of emergency department arrival for patients with acute stroke. In 2007, we implemented a new institutional acute stroke care model to include 10 best practices and evaluated the effect of this intervention on improvin...

Emergency department thrombolysis improves door to needle times.

OBJECTIVE To identify the effect on door to needle (DTN) time of moving the site of thrombolysis delivery from the coronary care unit (CCU) to the emergency department (ED). To ascertain if moving the site of thrombolysis enables appropriate use of thrombolysis. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING CCU and ED of a 450 bed Scottish district general hospital without on-site primary angiop...