Words from the President on stroke care during the COVID19 pandemic

25 Mar 2020 Words from the President

Professor Michael Brainin, President of the World Stroke Organization, Vienna, Austria

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

Around the globe we find ourselves adapting to a new reality. This is a big personal and professional challenge. Firstly, we have to bring our spouses and families into a safe situation and take care of our children in every imaginable way. Secondly, we have to make gross and unforeseen changes to our professional life. There, we have to consider our patients first.

From many sides I hear that to be a stroke patient has become more and more difficult. Resources are being cut, departments and stroke units moved to smaller and less capable locations, the armarium of therapeutic possibilities is being cut by new priorities and our intensive care beds are being kept open for Covirus patients. Our hours of duties on the wards are in danger of being redirected to the the Covirus management. The department heads and stroke unit managers have to spend many hours in administrative meetings in order to adapt to the new directives and lead their teams to new hospital entry pathways and management guidelines. At best we are losing time when our patients enter the hospitals and we have unforeseen delays in initiating emergency treatments, at the worst we are missing the therapeutic window altogether due to delays in hospital admission or referrals or patients preferring not to enter the hospital at all.

All these adaptations are necessary and we fully support all priority measures to treat Covirus patients as needed. But we also have to look at the fate of the many patients with other diseases. I even receive messages that the number of stroke admissions are decreasing in some regions.

Many of you have created some Whattsapp or Wechat groups among your professional contacts and I am asking you to make these experiences available on our website and social channels.

It would be a timely help for our international organization to see how we make adaptations in our countries, regions or even hospitals. I think that examples from hospitals or regions are most valuable. I urge you to send us some of your experiences in order to show the world how you are coping with the new requirements imposed upon our profession as stroke physicians, neurologists, nurses, medical personel or therapists.

We can then see how things are going from Timbuktu to Los Angeles, from Lagos to Oslo, or from Madrid to Teheran. It would be great to have a few reports from countries most severely affected by the Covirus pandemic.

I have two requests: 1. Please be quick. I want to send out the next newsletter by late next week and put further updates on our homepage and twitter. 2. Please do not write a long and academic letter (of course we take everything coming from you!) but wherever possible give us short and lively descriptions of how you handle your job under these new circumstances. Give us a description how your day starts and ends, what are the questions and fears of your patients, how your duties on the ward have changed, what happens to your research, and the lot more…

Everyone I talked to about the idea of creating such a compilation of short reports from around the world reacted enthusiastically and supportive. I am sure you will too.

Stay safe, stay healthy,

Warmest regards,

Michael Brainin MD March 21, 2020

President, WSO

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