Acute stroke is one of the five time-dependent conditions (first hour quintet, FHQ) that emergency medical services (EMS) must manage better and faster; early identification and treatment are critical to reduce both immediate damage and long-term disability. For Emergency Medical Communication Centers, the rapid and accurate identification of stroke patients is the challenge to be won in the coming years. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the ability of Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs) and rescuers to rapidly and...
A fast response to an emergency call is one of the main objectives of an emergency medical communication center (EMCC). In 2011, a scripted logic-based dispatch protocol system, the Medical Priority Dispatch System™ (MPDS®), was implemented in the five Liguria Region EMCCs in Italy, to manage emergency medical calls. However, response delay time (RD) (i.e., time from when the call rings to when emergency medical dispatcher [EMD] picks it up) and duration of emergency call (DEC) (i.e., time from call pick up to when the call is closed)...
The main objective of this study was to compare emergency medical dispatch (EMD) stroke identification with hospital-confirmed stroke. The secondary objective was to compare the results of stroke diagnostic tool (SDxT) of Medical Priority Dispatch System™ (MPDS®) with National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) used in hospital by neurologists. Data utilized for the observational study were taken from a preliminary stroke dataset collected at San Martino Hospital (Genova) between January 2016 and June 2017. All cases of suspected stroke arrived at First Aid began part of the study...
The evaluation of emergency calls received by Emergency Medical Communication Centers (EMCCs) is the first and basic step for activating the chain of survival. It also represents an essential prerequisite for optimal response to and management of critical patients. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the introduction of a single, structured, and standardized emergency medical dispatch system provided a more uniform evaluation of all emergency calls among five EMCCs in Liguria, Italy. The study retrospectively examined the assigned...
