Endovascular therapy may not be beneficial for patients with mild acute ischemic stroke compared to best medical management

We read with great interest the meta-analysis by Lin et al on the comparison of the clinical effectiveness between endovascular therapy (EVT) and best medical management (BMM) in patients with mild acute ischemic stroke (AIS).1 The study is of profound academic importance, and there are some points that we would like to address. In the "Statistical analyses" section, the authors described how they pooled data across studies by using the fixed effects model based on an inverse variance method. Subsequently, in the "Results – Primary outcome" section, the authors stated that for AIS patients with National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores ≤5, pooled results from the fixed effects model showed that EVT compared with BMM was associated with a higher rate of being disability-free in patients with proximal internal carotid artery (ICA) or first segment of middle cerebral artery (M1) occlusions (67.6% vs 60.6%; OR...
Source: Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery - Category: Neurosurgery Authors: Tags: Letter Source Type: research