More weekend stroke patients die - Heart Health

Weekend stroke patients have higher death risk

14 percent increase may be tied to lack of expertise, resources, experts say

DALLAS - If you have a stroke, try to have it between Monday and Friday.

A Canadian study released on Thursday found that patients hospitalized for the most common kind of stroke on weekends had a higher death rate than those admitted on weekdays.

The “weekend effect” has been identified before in other conditions such as cancer and pulmonary embolism.

But this is the first major study to look at it in relation to ischemic stroke, which is caused by a clot that blocks blood flow in an artery in or leading to the brain.

“If the ‘weekend effect’ occurs in a socialized health care system (like Canada’s), it is likely that the effect may be larger in other settings,” said Dr. Gustavo Saposnik, director of the Stroke Research Unit Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study.

The study, published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association, looked at all ischemic stroke hospital admissions in Canada from April 2003 to March 2004.

It found that about a quarter of the 26,676 patients admitted to 606 hospitals over that time period were brought in on Saturdays and Sundays.

“After adjusting for age, gender and other medical complications, researchers found that patients admitted on the weekend had a 14 percent higher risk of dying within seven days of admission compared to patients admitted during the week,” the American Heart Association said in a statement.

The “weekend effect” was even greater when patients went to a rural hospital instead of an urban one, and when the doctor in charge was a general practitioner instead of a specialist, it said.

Researchers said the higher death risk might be linked to a relative lack of resources or expertise in hospitals during weekends. But they did not elaborate and said more study was needed.

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No one with stroke-like symptoms should hesitate to seek medical treatment on weekends, they added.

“Although the differences in weekend admission found in this study may be real, the potential benefits of obtaining early treatment would well outweigh the risk of waiting,” said Dr. Larry Goldstein, chair of the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association.

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