Thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke: an evidence-based treatment

Just 2 years ago, at the International Stroke Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, the Interventional Management of Stroke (IMS III),1 Mechanical Retrieval and Recanalization of Stroke Clots Using Embolectomy (MR RESCUE),2 and SYNTHESIS-Expansion3 trials were presented and concurrently published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The overarching message to the medical community and lay press was that these studies provided unambiguous evidence that mechanical thrombectomy was ineffective in treating acute stroke secondary to emergent large vessel occlusion (ELVO). The investigators were careful to emphasize the adaptive designs of their trials, which allowed sites to use new thrombectomy devices as technology evolved, thus implying that the results would be directly applicable to modern clinical practice. When scrutinized by the interventional community, however, it was clear that these three trials had significant shortcomings.4 5 Most notably, these trials were limited by...

Source: Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery - April 13, 2015 Category: Neurosurgery Authors: Fiorella, D. J., Fargen, K. M., Mocco, J., Albuquerque, F., Hirsch, J. A., Chen, M., Gupta, R., Linfante, I., Mack, W., Rai, A., Tarr, R. W. Tags: Editorials Commentary Source Type: research