Leader: ESMINT – Birgit Amend

WP7 will ensure timely and wide dissemination of the results of the TENSION trial within the scientific community and the public, to ensure rapid transfer into clinical practice. Main objectives are:

• To raise public and scientific awareness of the project and of the clinical problem of thrombectomy in patients with extended stroke lesions in an extended time window
• To facilitate networking and mutual communication both to the scientific community and the general public
• To reach all the potential clinical, scientific, and non-scientific audiences (target groups)
• To ensure efficient exploitation of project results
• To provide accurate and reliable results to inform evidence-based recommendations by national and European stroke guideline committees
• To ensure the transfer of the results of TENSION into clinical practice
• To provide health-economic evaluations to governmental bodies and policy makers

TENSION is intended to have a profound impact on the treatment of acute stroke in the EU. The results of the large randomized controlled clinical trial in TENSION will provide first class evidence to guide recommendations by guideline committees and to change clinical practice. Information of cost-effectiveness will inform health policy makers in decisions and actions supporting the are-wide implementation of thrombectomy for stroke in their countries. WP7 will ensure the rapid and comprehensive dissemination of the results of the project to all target groups. Strong connections of consortium members to national and European stroke organizations as well as to the large companies providing devices for acute stroke treatment will ensure efficient dissemination of the projects results to important actors in organizing stroke treatment.

WP7 will be led by ESMINT which assembles European experts for interventional stroke treatment and has been involved in promoting thrombectomy for stroke by providing joined European recommendations for the organization of interventional stroke care bringing together six European Scientific societies (Fiehler et al., 2016). Dissemination will be supported by the project Coordinator (Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf), the Coordinating Investigator of the clinical trial (Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg), all National Coordinators (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Norway, Slovakia, Schweden), who are members of European and national stroke associations, guideline-writing groups, councils and advisory boards of neurological and stroke associations. SAFE and ICHOM will further support dissemination using established networks and communication channels. All scientific partners will be involved in this WP, building a consortium of well renowned, highly interconnected stroke researchers. TENSION also aims at initiating future stroke research. For this purpose, TENSION will follow the idea of sharing scientific data and providing open access to trial data.