This site is intended for healthcare professionals

Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Referral criteria from primary care - admission for CVA

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

The National Service Framework for older people states that all patients with acute stroke require urgent admission to hospital to allow:

  • medical stabilisation
  • assessment of factors that may lead to complications

Note that the availability of thrombolysis for CVA will have an impact on local referral protocols:

NICE (2,3) have stated with reference to thrombolysis in stroke that:

  • alteplase is recommended for the treatment of acute ischaemic stroke when used by physicians trained and experienced in the management of acute stroke
  • treatment must be started within 3 hours of onset of the stroke symptoms and after prior exclusion of intracranial haemorrhage by means of appropriate imaging techniques

All people with suspected stroke should be admitted directly to a specialist acute stroke unit following initial assessment, either from the community or from the A&E department (2).

NICE (2) :

  • Initial management of suspected and confifirmed TIA
    • offer aspirin (300 mg daily), unless contraindicated, to people who have had a suspected TIA, to be started immediately

    • refer immediately people who have had a suspected TIA for specialist assessment and investigation, to be seen within 24 hours of onset of symptoms

    • do not use scoring systems, such as ABCD2, to assess risk of subsequent stroke or to inform urgency of referral for people who have had a suspected or confirmed TIA

    • offer secondary prevention, in addition to aspirin, as soon as possible after the diagnosis of TIA is confirmed

Reference:


Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. This information will always be displayed when you visit this page