Objective: To study the prehospital time and influence factors of stroke patients in 35 hospitals from 15 cities.
Methods: Unified questionnaires were used to investigate all of the 2270 stroke patients after at the first week of onset from June 30, 2002 to April 30, 2003. Other than general data, the patients were divided into two groups according to prehospital time within or after 6 hours and all the factors influencing prehospital time of stroke patients were analysed with Chi-Square test and logistic regression.
Results: (1) All patients aged 18-102 with mean 64.8 y +/- 11.9 y including 60.2% of males. 78.8% of the patients were diagnosed as ischemic stroke and 21.2% hemorrhagic stroke. (2) 27.8% of the patients arriving at hospital immediately after the onset of stroke and 27.2% made emergency calls for ambulance. Only 25% of the patients had the sense that they should go to the hospital and receiving thrombolysis therapy after the onset of symptoms. 25% of the patients were ignorant of any knowledge about stroke, did not ask for help but waiting. (3) 57.5% of the patients arriving in hospital < or =6 hours after the onset and 58.6% went to emergency room directly. Thrombylysis rate among ischemic stroke patients arrived in hospitals < or = 6 hours was 6.7%. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed following factors were related to arriving in hospital within 6 hours with P < 0.001: whether to emergency room directly, to hospital by ambulance or not, distance between stroke onset site to hospital, whether patients know thrombolysis was immediately needed after the onset of stroke, whether more attention to be paid on stroke after the onset of symptoms, whether needs to go to hospital at once after the onset ect.
Conclusion: The main reasons for 42.5% stroke patients who arrived hospital over 6 hours were: lack of stroke knowledge, less using emergency call/ambulance,over 20 km between the site where stroke onset was occured and the hospital etc. To enhance public awareness about stroke was important to shorten the patients' arriving hospital's time.