An outpatient TIA clinic works! Insights from the creation and the first year of Bordeaux TIA clinic.

BACKGROUND

While the benefits of urgent management of transient ischemic attacks (TIA) are now well established, there is still no consensus on the best care pathway for TIA, particularly regarding hospitalization in an intensive care stroke unit compared to outpatient management in a TIA clinic. The objective of this study was to report the different steps required for the development of a TIA clinic addressing both the healthcare needs as well as architectural and economic constraints of a hospital, then to describe the results of the first year of activity of our TIA clinic.

METHOD: First, we described the various steps of the development of our TIA clinic and its operational modalities. Then we performed a cohort study of all patients with suspected TIA admitted in the outpatient clinic at Bordeaux University Hospital between November 7, 2022, until November 7, 2023. We analyzed data including characteristics of the population, diagnoses, treatments, hospitalization rate and length of stay. To assess the risk reduction of stroke occurrence three months after TIA, we compared the stroke rate predicted by the ABCD2 score to the observed stroke rate of our population at three months.

RSULTS: A total of 507 patients were admitted to the TIA clinic during the first year with a median length of stay of 5hours. Compared to the period when TIA were hospitalized in our intensive care stroke unit, this represents a tenfold increase in the rate of TIA patients admitted in our stroke unit with a tenfold reduction in the length of hospital stay. Among patients, 13.4% had a minor stroke, 34.5% had a probable TIA, 25.4% had a possible TIA, 26.6% had a differential diagnosis and 11% were subsequently hospitalized in the intensive care stroke unit. Most patients were referred by general practitioners. Our TIA clinic demonstrated a 68% reduction in the risk of stroke after TIA with an observed stroke rate of 0.98% after 3 months compared to the 3.1% predicted by the ABCD2 score.

CONCLUSION

The opening of a TIA clinic in Bordeaux metropole has significantly improved the management of TIA patients, which was previously inadequate in our territory. This study demonstrated that a hybrid model operating as an outpatient day hospital is effective as it successfully reduced the stroke rate after TIA, while increasing the capacity of TIAs admission to a stroke unit and shortening hospital stays.