CALL 911 FIRST IF HIT BY STROKE, STUDY ADVISES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 1, 1992                   TAG: 9202010207
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PHOENIX                                LENGTH: Short
CALL 911 FIRST IF HIT BY STROKE, STUDY ADVISES
Doctors studying what people should do if they think they're having a stroke came up with some surprising advice: Don't call your doctor.
Instead, they say to call an ambulance at the first sign of a stroke. The distinction could mean the difference between life and death.
While health officials have long campaigned to get people to the hospital at the first sign of a heart attack, the urgency of treating strokes has gotten less attention - in part because strokes are more difficult to treat.
Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in the United States after heart attacks and cancer, killing 145,000 people annually.
The study, conducted at the University of Cincinnati, found that people who called 911, the emergency number in most places, got to the hospital within an average of about three hours. Those who phoned their doctors were not hospitalized until about 10 hours after the first symptoms.
- Associated Press

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB