Optimal Post Tpa-Iv Monitoring in Ischemic Stroke

Research question: Patients receiving thrombolytic therapy (tissue plasminogen activator [tPA]) for acute ischaemic stroke (AIS), have been monitored with a high intensity schedule of vital signs and neurologic assessments, which often requires 1:1 nursing and/or admission in an intensive care unit (ICU) or similar ward for at least 24 hours after receiving tPA. Studies indicate that patients with mild degrees of AIS after tPA do not require such intensive monitoring, yet most stroke services continue to follow a practice recommended in guidelines based on the initial cautious evaluation of tPA in AIS over 20 years ago.

Design: Stepped-wedge cluster randomised design. With 3 groups and 4 phases. All groups starting with standard care and in each subsequent phase, groups I through III will switch to the intervention (low-intensity monitoring).

Study centers: This is a global study. Approximately 157 hospitals ('sites') in Australasia, Europe, South American, and North American regions, who are willing to accept the randomized intervention change and adhere to the protocol, collect a required minimum data set on patients over 7 days in hospital (or discharge or death, if sooner), and record any serious adverse event (SAE) during and at clinical outcome assessed at 90 days of follow-up of patients.

Consent/randomization: Hospitals will be eligible if they are using the proposed low-intensity nursing monitoring strategy. A stepped-wedge cluster randomized design has been chosen to avoid contamination, facilitate hospital-wide implementation, and maximize adherence, as the intervention under investigation is to become usual standard of care. The process of one direction (from control to intervention) is to facilitate the low intensity monitoring protocol being applied in clinical practice. The stepped-wedge design means that all hospitals will be randomly allocated to 3 groups: in phase 1, all hospitals will be observed under standard care 'control' conditions according to guideline recommended monitoring; in phase 2, the first cluster of hospitals (Group I) will start receiving the intervention (low-intensity), and then sequentially, Groups II and III will start receiving the interventional package in phase 3 and 4, respectively, so that by phase 4, all hospitals will have the intervention. Those hospitals in Group I are exposed to the intervention for longest time, and those in Group III, the shortest time.

In each phase, hospitals are to maintain a register of all thrombolyzed AIS patients, and to identify all those eligible for, or excluded from participating in the study. Hospitals are required to manage at minimum target of at least 10 consecutive thrombolyzed AIS patients who fulfill the eligibility criteria (presumed 50% of all thrombolyzed AIS patients) over each 4 month period. The recruitment number will vary from 10 to 30 patients, according to seasonal fluctuation and overall numbers of thrombolyzed AIS patients across hospitals. The target number and time limits for each phase will be pre-determined and agreed to with each hospital, to ensure an orderly completion of the study.