Article Text
Abstract
Purpose Clinical trials have provided evidence that treating patients with acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) beyond 4.5 hours was feasible. Among them using MRI diffusion-weighted imaging/fluid attenuation inversion response (DWI/FLAIR) mismatch to guide intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) was successful. Our study explored the outcome and safety of using DWI/T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) mismatch to guide intravenous tPA therapy for patients with AIS between 4.5 hours and 12 hours of onset.
Method This was a retrospective study. Records of 1462 AIS patients with the time of onset of <12 hours were reviewed. Those had MRI rapid sequence study and had hyperintense signal on DWI but normal T2WI and received intravenous tPA up to 12 hours of onset were included in the analysis. Their demographics, risk factors, post-tPA complications, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores and outcome were recorded and analyse. χ2 was used to compare the intergroup variables. SAS was used to perform statistical calculation. A p<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results Of 1462 identified, 601 (41%) patients were entered into the final analysis. Among them, 327 (54%) had intravenous tPA within 4.5 hours of onset and 274 (46%) were treated between 4.5–12 hours. After intravenous tPA, 426 cases (71%) had >4 pints of improvement on NIHSS score within 24 hours. Postintravenous tPA, 32 (5.32%) cases had haemorrhagic transformation. 26 (4.33%) were asymptomatic ICH and 4 (0.67%) died. At 90 days, 523 (87%) achieved a modified Rankin scale of 0–2.
Conclusion Using MRI DWI/T2WI mismatch to identify patients with AIS for intravenous tPA between 4.5 hours and 12 hours was safe and effective. The outcome was similar to those used DWI/PWI or DWI/FLAIR mismatch as the screening tool. However, obtaining DWI/T2WI was faster and avoided the need of contrast material.
- cerebral infarction
- stroke
- IV tPA
- multimodal MRI imaging.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Q-k B and Z-g Z contributed equally.
Contributors QB: had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis; ZZ: study concept and design, drafting of the manuscript, critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content and statistical analysis; LL: acquisition of clinical data; JS: acquisition of clinical data; JZ: acquisition of clinical data; HS: acquisition of imaging data; XX: acquisition of imaging data; JC: acquisition of clinical data; JY: acquisition of clinical data; CC: acquisition of clinical data.
Funding Funded by Key Discipline Group Construction Project of Pudong Health Bureau of Shanghai (Grant No. PWZxq2017-02) and by The Featured Clinical Discipline Project of Shanghai Pudong (Grant No. PWYst2018-01).
Competing interests None declared.
Ethics approval The study was approved by the ethics committee of the hospital.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement No additional data are available.
Patient consent for publication Not required.