Bo Norrving is professor in neurology at Lund University, Sweden. He has authored >300 publications on clinical stroke research including several seminal papers e g the Swedish Aspirin Low Dose Study, and the world’s largest study of stroke in the young. He is a founder of Riksstroke, the world’s 1st national stroke registry. He is member of the advisory group for ICH 11 at WHO. He was the President of the World Stroke Organization (WSO) 2008-2012, and continues as Immediate Past President till 2016 being the WSO liaison person with WHO and the UN. He chairs the WSO Global Policy Committee.

Stroke policy and quality register research group

Research

The Swedish quality registers are unique in their coverage of all major disease areas and completeness. The Swedish Stroke Register (Riksstroke) was founded in 1994 as the 1^st national stroke register in the world. All Swedish hospitals treating acute stroke patients participate. The main aims of Riksstroke are to support continuous quality improvement of Swedish stroke care, and to serve as a follow-up instrument for the Swedish National Guidelines for Stroke Care issued by the National Board of Health and Welfare. Riksstroke allows the monitoring of evidence based care principles and the introduction of new evidence-based practices.

Bo Norrving chair the Stroke policy and quality register research group which has several ongoing projects based on data from Riksstroke, and in many studies also using data record linkage to other national registers and data bases.

The thesis of Teresa Ullberg (October 2016) explored the 1-year follow up survey in Riksstroke. Important findings included the identification of disparities in Swedish post-stroke care, the lack of a structured follow-up service for stroke, the suboptimal use of secondary prevention, and a substantial degree of unmet needs in rehabilitation and care.

 The project of Fredrik Buchwald includes studies on the TIA module in Riksstroke, with a focus on risk factors and therapies in patients with TIA compared with stroke, and in patients with TIA or stroke with or without a prior stroke. A diagnostic validation study has also been performed.

 Planned projects include health economic evaluations of stroke care (Ullberg), analyses of the 3 and 5 year follow-up surveys (Ullberg), and studies on acute ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage occurring during anticoagulant therapy (Apostolaki-Hansson).

 Members of the research group are involved in several national and international collaborations such as Umeå University, the SSNAP quality register in the UK, and the Global Burden of Disease group at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, US.