J Neurol (2006) 253 : 1342–1346 DOI 10.1007/s00415-006-0219-7 Rene´ Handschu Michael Reitmayer Marlitt Raschick Frank Erbguth Bernhard Neundo¨rfer Elisabeth Babjar Received: 19 April 2005 Received in revised form: 21 July 2005 Accepted: 12 August 2005 Published online: 2 August 2006 R. Handschu, MD (&) M. Raschick, MD B. Neundo¨rfer, MD, PhD Department of Neurology Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuremberg Stroke Unit Schwabachanlage 6 91054 Erlangen, Germany Tel.: +49-9131/8533001 Fax: +49-9131/8534510 E-Mail: rene.handschu@neuro.med.uni- erlangen.de R. Handschu, MD Æ M. Reitmayer, MD E. Babjar, PhD Bavarian Division St. John Ambulance of Germany (Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe) F. Erbguth, MD, PhD Department of Neurology City General Hospital Nu¨rnberg O R I G I N A L C O M M U N I C A T I O N First aid in acute stroke Introducing a concept of first action to laypersons j Abstract Objective First aid training is well established to teach the public how to recognize a medical emergency and take appropriate action. Though it is now handled as a high priority emergency stroke is not among the main topics of ﬁrst aid. We investigated if ﬁrst aid training may be useful for enhancing stroke awareness. Methods We developed a 15–20 minute teach- ing session about stroke as an emergency including signs and symptoms and ﬁrst hands-on measures. The session was inte- grated in standard ﬁrst aid train- ing of the St John Ambulance of Germany and participants were asked to ﬁll out a questionnaire regarding their knowledge about stroke. Subjects were questioned before the stroke lesson and again at the end of the training. Results 532 participants of the training responded to the questionnaire (mean age 28.6 years, 53.6% male). There was a signiﬁcant increase in proportion of subjects correctly deﬁning what stroke is (28.4% vs. 69.9%, p < 0,001) and in the mean number of stroke symptoms listed (1.52 vs. 3.35, p < 0,001) by the participants. The number of participants unable to list at least 1 symptom decreased signiﬁcantly (12.8 vs. 3.6%, p<0.001). Conclusions In our study a teaching lesson integrated in ﬁrst aid training was effective in improving stroke knowledge of participants. First aid training should be used for stroke infor- mation complementary to other activities like mass media cam- paigns as it is effective, could reach younger people that are not primarily interested in stroke and provides connections to other health topics. j Key words acute stroke Æ knowledge Æ emergency medical service Æ ﬁrst aid Æ health educa- tion Introduction First aid is a concept of ﬁrst hands-on measures 9 performed in a medical emergency by laypersons. The 1 22 goal is to teach people how to recognize a medical JON emergency and start qualiﬁed action by providing measures of basic life support such as performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Other topics are injuries and burns, shock, unconsciousness or heart attack. In Germany ﬁrst aid training is mainly offered by charity organizations like the German Red Cross, or the St. John Ambulance. There are various training