THOUSANDS of patients are dying because they are not being treated in specialist units after suffering a stroke, campaigners said yesterday.

A report - the National Sentinel Audit for Stroke 2004 - said specialist services for stroke patients had improved in England, Wales and Northern Ireland over recent years.

Many hospitals in the North-East have above-average services, but North Yorkshire hospitals appear to have below-average services.

The report said that some hospitals still continued to deliver "lamentable care" and more work was needed to reduce the deaths and disability caused by stroke

The Stroke Association said that in England and Wales 130,000 people a year had a stroke - a third of whom were likely to die within ten days.

But the charity said that despite being the nation's third biggest killer, stroke was still not widely acknowledged as a medical emergency to the same degree as a heart attack.

The hospital trusts were given a score out of 100 based on standards such as time spent in a specialist stroke unit, access to emergency brain scans and rehabilitation services.

The average score across all hospitals was 61, but in some trusts scores were in the low 30s or even under 30.

The highest scoring trust in the region was the small Hexham General Hospital (87), in Northumberland, followed by the much larger Newcastle Hospitals Trust (77).

The lowest scoring hospital in the region was The Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, North Yorkshire (48).

How North hospitals scored

Hexham87Newcastle 77

Hartlepool 75

Middlesbrough 73

Bishop Auckland 68

North Tyneside 67

North Tees 66

South Tyneside 65

Darlington 55

North Durham 55

Sunderland 55

Harrogate 54

York 53

Friarage 4.