WSC 2026 | How has the Calgary Stroke Program influenced stroke services around the world?

So how has the Calgary Stroke Program influenced stroke services around the world? Well, certainly I think the imaging work that we’ve done around use of the development of the ASPECT score back in 2000 I think has certainly become part of general clinical practice and the subdivision that we now see with large and small core patients relates to those ASPECT ranges. So I think that’s certainly a contribution. The multi-phase CTA approach, which is a pragmatic approach to evaluating patients for reperfusion strategies, It’s certainly something that can be applied fairly easily in low-resource countries. It’s just moving the gantry back through the brain two extra times. So it’s just gantry movement, essentially, and nothing more. So I think that’s certainly another contribution. We’ve been very involved in many of the clinical trials in the field and have been part of several studies with many other clinical trials across the world that, you know, the thrombectomy story in particular, the recent TEMPO-2 trial demonstrating that low NIHSS patients with an occlusion do not benefit from thrombolysis is an important development in the field. We were also assisted in moving thrombolytics from alteplase toward tenecteplase through the ACT trial that Dr Bijoy Menon led. So those are some of the trial activities. You know, I think the other important thing is, you know, we love to train individuals. We’ve had a very busy and productive fellowship training program over the years. And now we have, you know, many of our former fellows around the world who are now stroke champions in their regions and their countries making a big difference. So it’s, you know, the training side has been certainly another element. One of the other things that we’re very proud of, and this is really from a Canadian perspective, is our Canadian Stroke Consortium, which is a professional association for stroke physicians. We’ve been able to really kind of build out an ecosystem there where we have a very active group of 200 to 250 stroke neurologists who communicate regularly through smartphone channels, through webinars and through research committees and all sorts of things that is, I think, made for a very vibrant community. So I really want to encourage other countries to think about building out professional associations for stroke physicians and so that they can work closer together and be part of a broader family, I would say, which is so important. It’s such a difficult disease where we’re trying to do our best for our patients, and we sometimes need that peer support from our colleagues in our countries. And associations like the Canadian Stroke Consortium are examples, I would say, of these professional associations that I would hope other countries would try to do as well.

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