Stroke Triage Scales for Patients with Neurosensory Complaints: A Literature Review

Considering the need for emergency medical technicians and triage nurses to familiarize themselves with stroke triage tools for faster diagnosis and referral of patients, the present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the psychometric characteristics of stroke triage scales for patients with neurosensory complaints.

In this review, the concept of electronic search based on PRISMA guidelines in reliable databases PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar search engines using the main keywords include triage, stroke, hospital, prehospital, emergency, tool, and scale in combination and individually were done from 1990 to 2022. Then, the data extraction included the name of the first author, the year of publication, the target population, the country, the name of the scale, the type of scale, and the components of the scale based on the checklist prepared by the researchers.

In general, the Twenty-five triage scales of this group of patients can be divided into two categories: pre-hospital stroke scales (including 18 scales) and hospital (including 7 scales), each of which has different psychometric characteristics. Scales, such as LAPSS, MAS, OPSS, and IPSS, which have covered stroke mimics, have high specificity. Scales, such as IPSS, which in addition to mimics examine vision status seem more comprehensive.

Less comprehensive scales have high sensitivity and low specificity, and scales that cover stroke mimics have high specificity. The high incidence of strokes caused by the middle-occluded artery reduced the differences between the scales.