Innovative Approaches and Treatment Inventions for Stroke Care at ISC 2024: Babak Navi, MD, MS

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“I think mobile stroke units are a technology that can help eliminate disparities. I think mobile stroke units proliferated and used more broadly throughout the country could treat patients with stroke of all backgrounds in the field about 30 minutes faster than standard treatment. I think it could help minorities in particularly.”

Mobile stroke units (MSUs), specialized ambulances, are supplied with personnel, equipment, and imaging capability to diagnose and treat acute stroke in a prehospital setting. In the past decade, use of MSUs has increased globally coming to head in the development of an international consortium. Most notably, 2 pivotal, large, controlled clinical trials, B_PROUD (NCT03931616) and BEST-MSU (NCT02190500), showed that treatment aboard MSUs were safe and improves functional outcomes among patients with stroke compared with conventional emergency care.¹

In a new prespecified substudy of BEST-MSU presented at the 2024 International Stroke Conference (ISC), February 7-9, in Phoenix, Arizona, findings showed that MSUs overcome known disparities in thrombolytic utilization and treatment metrics in nonHispanic Black and Hispanic ischemic stroke patient groups.² Based on these results, lead author Alexandra L. Czap, MD, assistant professor of neurology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston), and colleagues recommended future research on assessment of care inequities resolved through integration of a MSU into the prehospital setting.

Prior to the meeting, Babak Navi, MD, MS, a stroke neurologist who also serves as the vice chair for neurology hospital services, and the chief of the division of stroke and hospital neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine, sat down with NeurologyLive® to talk about the importance of stroke awareness. He shared what he is excited to learn about in the field from the latest data presented at the meeting, as well as his thoughts on Czap and colleagues’ mobile stroke unit study and its implications on racial disparities in stroke.

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REFERENCES
1. Navi BB, Audebert HJ, Alexandrov AW, Cadilhac DA, Grotta JC; PRESTO (Prehospital Stroke Treatment Organization) Writing Group. Mobile Stroke Units: Evidence, Gaps, and Next Steps. Stroke. 2022;53(6):2103-2113. doi:10.1161/STROKEAHA.121.037376
2. Czap AL, Rajan SS, Yamal JM, et al. Mobile Stroke Unit Management Associated With Reduction in Racial Disparities in Stroke Treatment Metrics. Presented at: 2024 International Stroke Conference; February 7-9; Phoenix, AZ. Abstract 88.