Stroke awareness campaign launched

The adverts, which will appear on TV, radio, online and in print, highlights the warning signs and urge people to call 999 if they suspect somebody is having an attack.

They also outline the "FAST" test - Face, Arm, Speech, Time - to gauge symptoms, including facial weakness, inability to raise both arms and whether somebody can speak or understand what is being said.

Around 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke every year and more than 67,000 die from it.

Studies have shown that patients who have their stroke confirmed by a scan quickly, and are given access to clot-busting drugs in the form of thrombolysis, have higher chances of survival.

It is also known that acting quickly on important warning signs, like transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs) - sometimes called "minor strokes" - saves lives and reduces long-term disability.

However, only 42 per cent of patients currently receive a brain scan within 24 hours to confirm their diagnosis and only 62 per cent are treated on a dedicated stroke unit.

The Royal College of Physicians has estimated that thousands of lives could be saved if patients were admitted straight to stroke units while 4,500 people could escape disability if they received thrombolysis.

In February last year, experts writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said only 30 acute trusts out of 175 provided thrombolysis.

Professor Roger Boyle, national director for and stroke, said three quarters of strokes were due to blood clots, which could be treated with thrombolysis.

But he said even in the best units only around one in ten patients are getting the drugs within three hours of the onset of symptoms, as set down in guidelines.

Delays were due to patients not recognising or shrugging off their symptoms, or calling their GP rather than 999, he said. However, he admitted that hospitals had to work to improve their response times.

"For every minute of delay you can lose about 1,000 miles of nerve fibres in the brain," he said. "So for everybody, speed is of the essence.

"Thrombolysis has only recently emerged as a treatment for a stroke, but we will now have a big escalation in its use. We will be auditing national performance as part of this process from April onwards."

Euro News24, 9th February 2009