90
Views
14
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Review

Organisational barriers to thrombolysis treatment of acute ischaemic stroke

, , , &
Pages 2833-2839 | Accepted 13 Sep 2007, Published online: 01 Oct 2007
 

ABSTRACT

Background: Intravenous thrombolysis with fibrinolytic drugs such as alteplase is not implemented widely in any country although the treatment is both effective and cost-effective in selected patients within a 3-h window after acute ischaemic stroke. The purpose of the present study was to describe the organisational barriers to delivery of thrombolysis for acute ischaemic stroke with special regard to the Danish healthcare system.

Method: Systematic and unsystematic searches of medical, economic and grey literature on organisational barriers to thrombolysis treatment were performed in Cochrane, PubMed, EMBASE, Cinahl, Econlit, NHS EED, SvedMed+ and the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) database. The search periods were 1996-2006.

Findings: Three main types of literature on organisational barriers were found: medical literature including HTA reports on barriers related to the 3-h window, economic literature on barriers related to the lack of capacity to provide the treatment on a 24-h basis, and grey literature/policy papers on standards and demands to the hospitals and healthcare systems who implements the treatment.

Conclusion: Information on organisational barriers can be extracted from different types of literature (medical, economic and grey literature/policy papers), but organisational barriers are most often not the primary study objective in the relevant literature. This review showed a broad spectrum of possible organisational barriers to the delivery of thrombolysis treatment of acute ischaemic stroke.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.