Stroke specialists at Salford Royal are aiming to reduce the toll of bleeding on the brain on patients in Greater Manchester.
Bleeding in the brain (intracerebral haemorrhage or ICH) causes 1 in 10 strokes but accounts for a far higher proportion of death and disability. For those that do survive, over half remain dependent on others for day-to-day care.
But recent research is offering fresh hope to the people affected and now a team from Salford Royal, led by Honorary Consultant Neurologist Adrian Parry-Jones, has been awarded £75,000 by independent health care charity the Health Foundation as part of its £1.5million Innovating for Improvement Programme.
It will support a project that aims to reduce the percentage of patients dying or left severely disabled six months after they have been admitted to a hyperacute stroke unit (HASU) with acute intracerebral haemorrhage in Greater Manchester. There are three HASUs in the area – Salford Royal, Stepping Hill and Fairfield.
Dr Parry-Jones has already brought in a hyperacute ICH care bundle at Salford Royal, which has resulted in an 8.5 per cent reduction in the number of patients dying within 30 days of being admitted with bleeding on the brain.
The package – Acute Bundle of Care for Intracerebral Haemorrhage (ABC-ICH) – includes:
- A anti-coagulation reversal – reversal of any blood thinning drugs in patients within 90 minutes
- B blood pressure lowering within six hours of patients first showing symptoms
- C care pathway – a detailed analysis of local data to make sure patients get timely access to neurosurgery and neurocritical care at the Greater Manchester Neurosciences Centre, based at Salford Royal.
It will be supported by an app for healthcare professionals to use at the bedside, which will also allow them to input live data to ensure close monitoring.
Dr Parry Jones said: “Intracerebral haemorrhage can be absolutely devastating but we know that specialist care, given as quickly as possible, can improve survival and recovery. We hope our project will mean a much better outlook for patients and their families.”
Work on setting up the project will start in January 2017, with the ABC bundle being introduced at Fairfield and Stepping Hill from April 2017.
Salford Royal’s award is one of 22 announced by the Health Foundation to improve health care delivery and/or the way people manage their own health care by testing and developing innovative ideas and approaches and putting them into practice.
Sarah Henderson, Associate Director from the Health Foundation said, “We are very excited to be working with such a high-calibre of teams, who all have great innovative ideas. As an organisation we are keen to support innovation at the frontline across all sectors of health and care services, and I am pleased that we will be able to support these ambitious teams to develop and test their ideas over the next year.
“Our aim is to promote the effectiveness and impact of the teams’ innovations and show how they have succeeded in improving the quality of health care, with the intention of these being widely adopted across the UK.”