Aims: Our aim was to assess the effects on clinical outcomes of endovascular treatment vs. thrombolysis alone in patients with ischaemic stroke.
Methods and results: PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and ClinicalTrials.gov databases were searched for randomised trials comparing endovascular treatment vs. intravenous thrombolysis alone in acute ischaemic stroke. Data were pooled by meta-analysis using a fixed-effects or a random-effects model, as appropriate. Eight studies enrolling 2,423 participants were included. Compared with thrombolysis alone, endovascular treatment was associated with higher rates of 90-day modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores of 0-2 (42.4% vs. 31.8%, odds ratio [OR] 1.71, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.17-2.49, p=0.005, number needed to treat to benefit [NNTB]=8), and of recanalisation at 24-30 hours (76.9% vs. 39.6%, OR 4.49, 95% CI: 2.41-8.38, p<0.001, NNTB=2.9), with similar risk of symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage (5.4% vs. 4.9%, OR 1.08, 95% CI: 0.75-1.56, p=0.67) and all-cause death (15.3% vs. 16.6%, OR 0.86, 95% CI: 0.69-1.07, p=0.18). In subgroup analysis the benefits of endovascular treatment were restricted to studies where stent retriever systems were routinely employed.
Conclusions: In patients with acute ischaemic stroke, endovascular treatment is a safe and more effective strategy than intravenous thrombolysis alone.