Top marks for SWAH stroke unit

THE stroke unit at the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) has long been renowned as top class, and now it has been confirmed as the best in the North – by a country mile.

In fact, the performance of the state-of-the-art unit at the Enniskillen hospital has been so impressive, there have been calls for SWAH to be considered as the location of a specialist hyperacute stroke unit in any future centralisation of stroke services.

The latest report by the Sentinel Stroke National Audit Programme (SSNAP), which assesses the performance of stroke care across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, has given an overall ‘A’ rating to the SWAH unit.

It was the only stroke unit in the North to get top marks, with the Royal Victoria, Craigavon, and Ulster hospitals all receiving an overall ‘B’ grade, Daisy Hill getting a ‘C’, and Causeway, Antrim Area and Altnagelvin hospitals receiving a ‘D’.

The audit measured a number different aspects of care when assessing units, including scanning, various different therapies, thrombolysis, specialist assessments, patient care, and multi-disciplinary team work. The SWAH was outstanding in all areas, receiving an ‘A’ in eight out of 12 domains.

One of those areas of assessment was access to the stroke unit itself, which was determined by measuring the time between a patient arriving at a hospital’s emergency department (ED) and arriving at the stroke unit. Again, SWAH came out top by a wide margin.

The SWAH received a ‘B’ in this category, with all other hospitals in the North getting an ‘E.’

That was because the median time from ED arrival to the stroke unit at the SWAH was two hours 25 minutes. Meanwhile, at the Royal it was six hours, at Craigavon it was just under six hours, at the Ulster it was 17-and-a-half hours, and at Altnagelvin it was just under 18 hours.

This was not necessarily down to having less patients to treat, either. For example, the number of admissions to the SWAH during the study period of July to September was on par with the number of admissions to Altnagelvin – 50 and 51, respectively.

The latest report will be warmly welcomed by local campaigners, who mounted a massive community campaign to save the unit after it was threatened with closure in 2016 as part of a centralisation plan which proposed closing units in smaller hospitals in favour of specialised hyperacute units at larger hospitals.