University of Debrecen

Institute presentation

The University of Debrecen is a rapidly developing knowledge center of the Region Észak-Alföld, Hungary, which aim is to support innovation based on market needs and to play a key role in the economic growth of the region. Altogether 12 academic research groups, 23 doctoral schools and 7 innovative research teams are working at the University of Debrecen. The university has around 900 PhD students. The socio-economic benefits are also enormous: strong basic research is likely to enhance the presence of pharmaceutical, chemical, health industry and biotechnology in the region. Today, the university is comprised of 15 faculties and has over 33,000 students.

The University has a Clinical Center providing state of the art high quality patient care for the North-Great Plain region. The Clinical Center’s mission is improving the diagnostic and therapeutic treatment arsenal, and to establish nation-wide regional profiles. The Department of Neurology has 66 beds to conduct in-patient care, including a General Male and Female ward (35 beds), a highly specialized Stroke Unit (20 beds) and an Intensive Care Unit (11 beds). The Department’s Stroke Unit meets the recently established European Stroke Organization’s standards concerning the management of acute stroke patients.

The management of acute stroke patients is standardized and highly coordinated in order to minimize treatment delays. The Department of Neurology (University of Debrecen) has depth of experience in the management of acute stroke. During the past 8 years an acute stroke unit was developed consisting an in-house CT imaging facility, and an intensive care unit. Formal local protocols were developed to support adherence to the most up-to date guidelines in the management of acute stroke patients. During the past years the Department managed to perform intravenous thrombolysis in over 10% of the acute stroke patients in its catchment area of half a million inhabitants, making this a cutting edge facility. In addition to intravenous (iv) thrombolysis, intra-arterial (ia) thrombolysis as well as iv lysis bridging with ia lysis are performed. Starting from the fact that the Department is the single point of entry for acute stroke patients in the county (covering 550 thousand people) and that a high number of acute stroke patients are elderly, the physicians at the Department have access to this special patient group and have the relevant expertise to deal with this age group in terms of acute stroke care.

The Head of the Department has an extensive network of key opinion leaders in acute stroke management in Hungary as he was the past president of the Hungarian Stroke Association and is the head of the neurology section of the Hungarian College of Physicians. Therefore, this partner is in a position to ensure that new standards emerging as the deliverables of the present proposal will be implemented in Hungary. Alternatively, multi-parametric monitoring for the acute stroke patients including the continuous assessment of blood pressure, ECG, blood glucose level, saturation, body temperature, and neurological stage in a semi-intensive unit and early rehabilitation govern the management of acute stroke patients.

Main tasks attributed in the project:

The University of Debrecen Clinical Center Department of Neurology participated in the project as the national study co-ordinator for Hungary and as a study site, recruiting patients for WP1 (Trial management). Accordingly, the Department invited relevant recruitment sites to participate, and provided support for their tasks. According to the relevant protocol the Department actively screened and recruited elderly stroke patients.