Intravenous rtPA versus mechanical thrombectomy in acute ischemic stroke: A historical cohort in Joinville, Brazil

• Incidence of ischemic stroke have been increasing in low and middle income countries ( LMIC) over last 3 decades.
• Combined intravenous – endovascular approach opened a new era in treatment of ischemic stroke with absolute risk reduction of functional dependency.
• How far these data might be translated to LMIC settings?

Groundbreaking results concerning ischemic stroke (IS) hyperacute treatment worldwide were published in 2014 and 2015. We aimed to compare functional status after 3 months in patients treated with intra-arterial thrombectomy (IAT) and those treated with intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) alone in Joinville, Brazil.From the Joinville Stroke Registry, we extracted and compared all consecutive IVT patients treated with r-tPA within 4.5 h in the period 2009–2011 versus all consecutive IAT treated within 6 h with the Solitaire FR device plus IVT in the period 2012–2014.We registered 82 patients in the IVT group and 31 patients in the IAT group. At hospital admission, patients in the IAT group were significantly younger (p < 0.001), had a higher educational level (p = 0.001), had a slightly higher prevalence of atrial fibrillation (p = 0.057) and had more severe strokes measured by the NIH stroke scale (p = 0.011). After 90 days, 45% of patients in the IAT group and 27% in the IVT group were independent (0–1 points) according to the modified Rankin scale (adjusted odds ratio: 4.53; 95% CI: 1.22 to 16.75). Symptomatic hemorrhage was diagnosed in 10% of patients in both groups (p = 1.0). The 90-day case-fatality was 39% (32/82) in the IVT group and 26% (8/31) in the IAT group (p = 0.27). In this small cohort, a greater rate of functional independence was achieved in patients treated with IAT plus IVT, compared with patients treated with IVT lysis alone. Our “real-world” findings are consistent with results of controlled, randomized clinical trials.