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08 December 2016

The world’s longest running register which follows-up with people who have had a stroke, is based at King’s.

The world’s longest running register which follows-up with people who have had a stroke, is based at King’s.

The South London Stroke Register (SLSR) has been following up all first-ever strokes in people living in Lambeth and Southwark since 1995 and has now collected data on more than 6,000 patients.

SLSR research has led to improvements in understanding the impact of stroke and its natural history, resulting in improved survival and long-term outcomes for patients, as well as cost savings for the NHS.

We have collectively as a stroke community achieved great things in the past 20 years, but there is still so much to do.

Professor Charles Wolfe, Professor of Public Health at King’s College London

The Department of Health, National Audit Office and the Stroke Strategy working party have used it to improve the configuration of acute and long term care.

This includes the highly successful 2010 reconfiguration of stroke services in London, where the register provided the data needed to model the most effective way of delivering treatment and hospital beds.

This new system means that anyone suspected of having a stoke is admitted immediately to one of eight high quality Hyper-Acute Stroke Units, rather than to one of 30 hospitals in the capital.

An evaluation of this new system found an estimated 12% reduction in deaths of stroke patients after 90 days. This equated to 168 fewer deaths in the first 21 months of the service. There was also a reduction in the length of time spent in hospital, saving the NHS an estimated £811 per patient.

“We have collectively as a stroke community achieved great things in the past 20 years, but there is still so much to do, particularly around reducing risk and managing the longer term needs of people with stroke and their families” said Professor Charles Wolfe, Professor of Public Health at King’s College London, who set up the Register.

Pictures: Stroke survivors Sheila, Barbara and Pauline by Hedvig Larsson – photographed as part of a collaboration between the King’s Stroke Research Patients & Family Group and students from Camberwell College of Arts to mark 20 years of the South London Stroke Register.

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