Multidisciplinary care for ALS reduces emergency hospitalization and improves survival

Multidisciplinary care is recommended for the management of ALS. However, it has not been widespread in Japan due to the cost of medical care and the insufficient availability of medical staff. The research group established multidisciplinary outpatient care “ALS clinic” in February 2017. Thus far, no study has been conducted on the effect of multidisciplinary treatment on ALS in Japan. The authors investigated the number of emergency hospitalizations, incidence rate of emergency hospitalizations, and survival rates of patients with ALS.

In this retrospective study, patients were divided into two groups: a General Neurology Clinic (GNC) group and an ALS Clinic (AC) group. The main outcomes included the number of emergency hospital admissions, incidence rate of emergency hospitalizations, and survival rate. Emergency admissions were defined as admissions other than those planned by the neurologist. Incidence rate of emergency hospitalization and survival rate were calculated from the date of diagnosis until the last follow-up.

The participants of the survey included 90 patients with ALS (32 in GNC vs. 58 in AC). The number of patients with multiple emergency hospitalization was significantly decreased. Survival rate showed a significant difference between the two groups. Incidence rate of emergency hospitalizations did not show any significant difference.

“These results indicate that multidisciplinary care for ALS is associated with a reduction in multiple emergency hospitalizations and improved survival for patients with ALS. It is expected that multidisciplinary care for ALS will spread and develop in Japan in the future,” said Sugisawa, the lead author of the study.