Fellows' Discussion Dinner, Gary Ford `Hyper-acute stroke therapies - meeting the challenge of translating evidence into clinical practice'

Fellows are invited to attend a discussion dinner at the Academy, featuring a talk by Professor Gary Ford CBE FMedSci, Oxford Academic Health Science Network. 

Attendance costs £60 per head. Fellows may bring one non-Fellow guest. 

For more information, contact info@acmedsci.ac.uk or book a place using the form below.

Hyper-acute stroke therapies – meeting the challenge of translating evidence into clinical practice

The acute management of stroke has undergone profound changes in the last 25 years with the development of thrombolysis for ischaemic stroke being one of the major advances in emergency medicine during this period.  

When the benefits of thrombolysis in stroke were shown in clinical trials, it was a disruptive medical innovation that could not be easily incorporated into existing pathways of care.  This led to resistance to implementation of thrombolysis from a number of groups which continues to this day albeit by a diminishing number of individuals. 

The highly time dependent benefits of thrombolysis required the development of health care systems that rapidly identify and transport people with stroke to hospitals with brain imaging and clinical expertise to assess  and deliver thrombolysis. 

This need led to research and service developments focusing on increasing public awareness of the signs of stroke, developing pre-hospital systems of rapid triage of stroke patients to stroke centres, and establishment of specialist stroke teams and access to rapid brain imaging. 

Concerns about the translation of benefits shown in clinical trials into routine clinical practice and few data on outcomes in certain patient groups, notably the very elderly, led to a provisional licence by the European regulators and the creation of a large academic led database of stroke outcomes across Europe. 

Thrombolytic therapy is now well established within the NHS but similar challenges will arise with the implementation of endovascular treatment for acute stroke which is more effective at achieving early vessel recanalisation, and hypothermia if this is shown to be effective. 

The experience of developing health service and research infrastructure able to deliver hyper-acute stroke therapies and relevance to the development of novel emergency therapies for other conditions is described.