Only 36.6 percent of patients with ischemic stroke reached a hospital within three hours of symptom onset in a Korean analysis of acute-stroke care data. That was barely different from the 35.4 percent recorded in 2013.
The study, released in July by a team at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital using Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service data, found a large difference by mode of transport. Patients brought by the 119 emergency service reached the emergency department in an average of 2.3 hours, compared with 9.8 hours for those arriving by private car or other means.
Arrival time has barely improved
The figures do not prove that transport choice alone explains every delay, because symptom recognition, location, severity and access can also affect arrival time. Even so, the gap shows that the route into emergency care is strongly associated with how quickly treatment evaluation begins.
Stroke care is highly time-sensitive because some treatments depend on how long it has been since symptoms started and on imaging and clinical findings at the hospital. A national arrival rate that has barely moved in a decade suggests that improvements inside hospitals do not solve delays that occur before patients reach the door.
The public-health challenge is therefore partly logistical and behavioral: recognizing a possible stroke, activating emergency services and getting the patient into the acute-care system quickly. The dataset gives policymakers a measurable baseline for whether future emergency-response campaigns actually shorten arrival times.