Stroke units ‘could save 1,000 lives every year’

UP to 1,000 people who die in this country from stokes each year could be saved if there were enough specialist stroke unit beds in the health system.

Leading geriatrician Professor Declan Lyons led a two-year study into the first such unit to open here, whose patients were found to have a 16% better chance of survival than those treated in a general rehabilitation unit.

Yesterday, he told a press conference that half the 2,000 patients who die here every year from stroke, could be saved — by increasing the number of stroke unit beds in the system, from the 61 currently available to 200.