ROSIER scale is useful in an emergency medical service transfer protocol for acute stroke patients in primary care center: A southern China study

Objective: The aim of the study is to validate whether the Recognition Of Stroke In the Emergency Room (ROSIER) scale can be used by general practitioners (GPs) in an emergency medical service (EMS) protocol to transfer stroke patients from primary care center to advanced hospital with acute stroke center. Methods: GPs prospectively performed the ROSIER scale and the Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale (CPSS) on suspected stroke patients as a transfer protocol. All patients were immediately transferred to the Level-II hospital for further treatment. Results: 468 of the 512 suspected stroke patients met the inclusion criteria in this study. The ROSIER scale showed a diagnostic sensitivity of 83.13% (95% confidence intervals [CI] 79.74-86.52%) and specificity of 80.88% (95% CI 77.32-84.44%). The CPSS showed a diagnostic sensitivity of 78.01% (95% CI 74.26-81.76%) and specificity of 70.59% (95% CI 66.46-74.72%). The Kappa statistic value of the ROSIER scale and the CPSS were 0.601 and 0.454, respectively. The area under the curve (AUC) of ROSIER scale was large than the CPSS (AUC 0.855 vs. 0.791). However, the difference was not significantly different. Conclusions: This study suggest that ROSIER and CPSS could be used in an EMS protocol to transfer stroke patients from a primary care center to an advanced hospital offering thrombolysis service