A new study published on Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that three-quarter of the stroke patients suffering a stroke don’t act quickly enough to get to the nearest hospital and get the proper treatment.

Kathryn M. Rose, a research associate professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina and her colleagues analyzed data on 15,117 people treated for strokes at 46 hospitals in North Carolina between 2005 and 2008.

It is known that the treatment for an ischemic stroke consisting in injections of clot-dissolving tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), is effective only in the first three hours after the stroke occurs.

The study found that only 23 percent of the people analyzed arrived at hospitals within two hours of the onset of symptoms. Another worrisome finding was only 23.6 percent had a CT scan within 25 minutes after arrival out of the 3,549 people who arrived within two hours of symptoms.

“We found that women were less likely to get timely treatment. Also, treatment was faster in hospitals that were certified stroke centers, which have a formal plan for diagnosis and treatment,” Rose said.

Strokes are the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer, and the leading cause of adult disability. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 780,000 Americans will have strokes this year, about 150,000 of them will die from it and about 15 to 30 percent will be left disabled.

Health care providers urge people to be more cautious at stroke’s symptoms, namely dizziness, loss of balance, trouble walking, severe headache, weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body, confusion, trouble speaking or understanding blurred vision.