Safety and Feasibility of a Rapid Outpatient Management Strategy for Transient Ischemic Attack and Minor Stroke: The Rapid Access Vascular Evaluation-Neurology (RAVEN) Approach.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Although most transient ischemic attack and minor stroke patients in US emergency departments (EDs) are admitted, experience in other countries suggests that timely outpatient evaluation of transient ischemic attack and minor stroke can be safe. We assess the feasibility and safety of a rapid outpatient stroke clinic for transient ischemic attack and minor stroke: Rapid Access Vascular Evaluation-Neurology (RAVEN). METHODS: Transient ischemic attack and minor stroke patients presenting to the ED with a National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score of 5 or less and nondisabling deficit were assessed for potential discharge to RAVEN with a protocol incorporating social and medical criteria. Outpatient evaluation by a vascular neurologist, including vessel imaging, was performed within 24 hours at the RAVEN clinic. Participants were evaluated for compliance with clinic attendance and 90-day recurrent transient ischemic attack and minor stroke and hospitalization rates. RESULTS: Between December 2016 and June 2018, 162 transient ischemic attack and minor stroke patients were discharged to RAVEN. One hundred fifty-four patients (95.1%) appeared as scheduled and 101 (66%) had a final diagnosis of transient ischemic attack and minor stroke. Two patients (1.3%) required hospitalization (one for worsening symptoms and another for intracranial arterial stenosis caused by zoster) at RAVEN evaluation. Among the 101 patients with confirmed transient ischemic attack and minor stroke, 18 (19.1%) had returned to an ED or been admitted at 90 days. Five were noted to have had recurrent neurologic symptoms diagnosed as transient ischemic attack (4.9%), whereas one had a recurrent stroke (0.9%). No individuals with transient ischemic attack and minor stroke died, and none received thrombolytics or thrombectomy, during the interval period. These 90-day outcomes were similar to historical published data on transient ischemic attack and minor stroke. CONCLUSION: Rapid outpatient management appears a feasible and safe strategy for transient ischemic attack and minor stroke patients evaluated in the ED, with recurrent stroke and transient ischemic attack rates comparable to historical published data.

Opioid overuse pain syndrome (OOPS): the story of opioids, prometheus unbound.

Throughout history, opioids have effectively alleviated pain but not without the risk of addiction and death. Seductive and dangerous, full of promise and destruction, opioids are both revered and feared by Western culture. Their exponential use in "developed countries" is now an enormous public health problem and requires us to harness their properties with scientific rigor and adequate safeguards. The use of opioids for the treatment of chronic nonterminal pain (CNTP) has been a relatively new phenomenon which has coincided with the proclamation by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organization in 2000 that pain assessment be the "fifth vital sign," notwithstanding the fact that pain is a symptom and not a sign.(1) Nonetheless, this resulted in a culture of a marked increase in use of opioids for acute and chronic pain management. Consequently, there are many unintended outcomes which include opioid-induced hyperalgesia increased diversion, addiction, and death. Understandably, this has resulted in many regulatory responses from such agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and state medical boards. This article proposes a clinically relevant paradigm of opioid overuse pain syndrome. The goal of this article is to inform the clinicians of the complicated neurobiology of opioids. It is our hope that scientists rather than government regulators dictate the appropriate response to the epidemic of over prescription of opioids. A similar designation of "medication overuse headache" has resulted in near extinction of excessive use of opioids in the field of headache medicine.