An structured survey was conducted to investigate the pre-hospital delay time and identify factors associated with this delay in acute stroke patients. Seventy five patients and their families were interviewed for the purpose of this study. The median of the pre-hospital delay time, defined as the time taken from the recognition of stroke symptoms to arrival at the first hospital, was 12 hours, The mean delay time of patients who were admitted to the hospital within 72 hours was 18 hours. Both the median and mean delay time showed a minor improvement in seeking treatment soon after the symptom onset, yet both numbers are far from both the recommended time window for desired treatment outcomes and previous findings from the US. Only 28% of subjects arrived at the first hospital within 3 hours, the time window. Total 50.7% of subjects arrived at the first hospital within 12 hours, and among these 46.7% arrived within 6 hours. Supporter, number of perceived symptoms, whether visual difficulties were accompanied, and whether the patients and family members had previous group education about the stroke significantly affected the delay time. Additionally, the pre-hospital delay showed revers correlation with the activities of daily living(ADL) score, which may suggest that pre~hospital has an adverse effects on the disease outcome after acute stroke.
Findings from this study suggest that education program for the high-risk group of patients and their families need to be developed to facilitate their capabilities of recognizing stroke symptoms and to react promptly. Public campaign for utilizing emergency service to reduce transportation time for the acute stroke patients need to be facilitated.
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