Abstract
Introduction: Symptom recognition and timely access to treatment are critical components of acute stroke care systems. Two mnemonics widely used in public educational campaigns for recognizing stroke symptoms include FAST (Face-Arm-Speech-Time) and BEFAST (Balance-Eyes-Face-Arm Speech-Time). The FAST mnemonic can miss up to 14% of strokes. BEFAST includes common posterior circulation stroke symptoms and has been implemented by several Comprehensive Stroke Centers (CSCs).
Methods: We sought to analyze the pattern of public educational materials available on the websites of US CSCs. The Joint Commission (JC) quality check website compiles a list containing the names and locations of the country’s 217 JC-certified CSCs, which was downloaded in August, 2022. Each CSC’s website was searched for educational material containing FAST and BEFAST mnemonics for stroke symptom recognition.
Results: The FAST mnemonic was listed by 35% of CSCs, the BEFAST by 58%, with 7% listing no specific mnemonic. The highest portion of CSCs using BEFAST was in western (65%) and southeastern (63%) states. The highest percentage of CSCs with no listed mnemonic were in the northeastern (14%) and southeastern (13%) states.
Conclusion: Consistency is critical in shaping public health education related to stroke symptoms recognition. Our study suggests further effort is needed to unify the public messaging on stroke recognition.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2024
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2024.1359131
Funding Information
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Repository Citation
Hogge, Christopher; Goldstein, Larry B.; and Aroor, Sushanth R., "Mnemonic utilization in stroke education: FAST and BEFAST adoption by certified comprehensive stroke centers" (2024). Neurology Faculty Publications. 89.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/neurology_facpub/89
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Notes/Citation Information
© 2024 Hogge, Goldstein and Aroor. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.