Eligibility for Intravenous Recombinant Tissue-Type Plasminogen Activator Within a Population
Therapies Saturday, June 2nd, 2012Stroke.ahajournals.org: March 22, 2012.
Background and Purpose—The publication of the European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study (ECASS III) expanded the treatment time to thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke from 3 to 4.5 hours from symptom onset. The impact of the expanded time window on treatment rates has not been comprehensively evaluated in a population-based study.
Methods—All patients with an ischemic stroke presenting to an emergency department during calendar year 2005 in the 17 hospitals that compromise the large 1.3 million Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky population were included in the analysis. Criteria for exclusion from thrombolytic therapy are analyzed retrospectively for both the standard and expanded timeframes with varying door-to-needle times. Read more