A UCLA-led study on improving stroke care was selected by the Clinical Research Forum (CRF) as one of the 10 most outstanding research papers written by teams from across the nation in 2014. UCLA study authors include Dr. Gregg Fonarow, Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science, and Dr. Jeffrey Saver, a professor of neurology, and director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center. Both are with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
The 10 winning papers were chosen based on their degree of innovation from a pool of more than 50 nominations from 30 research and academic health centers nationwide. Fonarow accepted the honor for the team at an awards ceremony held in Washington, D.C., on April 16.
UCLA’s paper had the added distinction of also receiving a Distinguished Clinical Research Achievement Award, one of only two papers to receive this additional honor.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 2014, the study compared door-to-needle time for receiving the clot-busting drug tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) for acute ischemic stroke before and after implementation of “Target:Stroke,” a quality improvement program sponsored by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Researchers found that hospitals implementing this program markedly increased the speed with which they treated stroke patients with tPA. The faster treatment was accompanied by improved outcomes, including reduced mortality, fewer treatment complications and greater likelihood that patients would go home after leaving the hospital instead of being referred to a skilled nursing facility for advanced rehabilitation.
