Treating Acute and Hemorrhagic Stroke – What is the “State of the Art?”

Acute stroke care is a multidisciplinary effort that has seen tremendous change in the past decade. The overall effort of treating stroke patients to optimize their outcome has experienced a few medical advances and a number of political/organizational advances. The most notable medical advances are reperfusion efforts for acute ischemic stroke as well as significant advances in imaging stroke of all types. The political/organizational advances include formalization of “Stroke Center” recognition as well as many efforts to mandate regionalization of stroke care. The sum of these medical and organizational advances, if implemented well, can signifi cantly improve outcomes from stroke and represent the current state of the art.