Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale
Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale - a deterministic tool in Sophie Well's EMS & Field Medicine group.
Open the Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale → Runs in your browser. No signup, no tracking.
What this is
Apply the Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale - a three-item bedside screen for acute stroke: facial droop (asymmetry when the patient smiles), arm drift (one arm drifts down when both arms are held out for 10 seconds), and abnormal speech (slurred, wrong words, or unable to speak). Any single positive finding raises the probability of acute stroke to roughly 72% in prehospital studies. Sophie Well presents the three checks with the standard prompts and reports the screen result.
When to use it
Use this when a prehospital crew or first-responder encounters a patient with sudden neurologic symptoms and you need a fast, validated screen to trigger a stroke alert and the closest-appropriate-facility routing decision. Cincinnati is intentionally simple - three items, no scoring threshold beyond "any positive" - so it can be applied in under a minute by a single rescuer. For destination decisions that distinguish large-vessel occlusion from smaller strokes (and therefore comprehensive versus primary stroke center routing), pair Cincinnati with a large-vessel screen such as RACE, LAMS, or VAN.
References
Kothari RU, Pancioli A, Liu T, Brott T, Broderick J. Cincinnati Prehospital Stroke Scale: reproducibility and validity. Acad Emerg Med. 1997;4(9):986-990.
Worked example: POSITIVE (1 of 3)
Sophie Well is a reference and educational tool. Not medical, legal, or financial advice. Does not replace clinician judgment, professional billing review, or legal counsel.