Middle school kids taught to recognize stroke

By Joene Hendry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A progressive, grade-appropriate stroke education program increased middle school students' understanding of stroke as a true medical emergency and their understanding of the need to call 911 when witnessing a stroke, researchers report.

"Since stroke patients [frequently] cannot call 911 themselves, it is the responsibility of all of us to recognize stroke and call 911," Dr. Lewis B. Morgenstern told Reuters Health Morgenstern said.

The KIDS program, which stands for Kids Identifying and Defeating Stroke, "is an exciting way to achieve this aim, by teaching children to make the call to 911 when they witness a stroke," he added.

Morgenstern, Director of the Stroke Program at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor, and colleagues enlisted three urban schools in Corpus Christi, Texas to participate in the stroke education program for students in grades 6, 7, and 8. Three comparable schools served as control schools by providing standard health education.

The researchers compared stroke knowledge before the program and three years later among the 128 students who completed the intervention and 121 control students.

"The intervention students improved in a robust fashion in all measures," Morgenstern said. In tests on stroke pathophysiology, symptom knowledge, and what to do for a witnessed stroke, intervention students improved from 29 to 34 percent, 28 to 43 percent, and 36 to 54 percent, respectively.

By contrast, the control students improved only slightly on measures of stroke symptom knowledge and what to do for a witnessed stroke, and declined in measures of stroke pathophysiology, the researchers report.

Morgenstern and colleagues hope to conduct follow up studies to determine if such an educational intervention actually increases the use of emergency medical services for strokes witnessed by student participants.

SOURCE: Stroke, November 2007.