Surgery versus thrombolysis for initial management of acute limb ischaemia.

CONCLUSIONS: There is currently no evidence in favour of either initial thrombolysis or initial surgery as the preferred option in terms of limb salvage, amputation, or death at 30 days, six months, or one year. Low-quality evidence suggests that thrombolysis may be associated with higher risk of haemorrhagic complications and ongoing limb ischaemia (distal embolisation). The higher risk of complications must be balanced against risks of surgery in each individual case. Trial results show no statistical difference in stroke, but the confidence interval is very wide, making it difficult to interpret whether this finding is clinically important. We used GRADE criteria to assess the quality of the evidence as generally low. We downgraded quality owing to risk of bias, imprecision, and heterogeneity between included studies. PMID: 30095170 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research