Is endovascular treatment alone as effective and safe as that with preceding intravenous thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke? A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Introduction: This meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of direct endovascular therapy (EVT) and bridging therapy (EVT with preceding intravenous thrombolysis i.e. IVT), in acute anterior circulation, large vessel occlusion stroke.

Evidence acquisition: Following the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic literature review of the English language literature was conducted using PubMed, Cochrane CENTRAL, SCOPUS and ClinicalTrials.gov. Outcomes of interest were measured by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS), and included: no disability (mRS0), no significant disability despite some symptoms (mRS1), slight disability (mRS2), moderate disability (mRS3), moderately severe disability (mRS4), severe disability (mRS5), mortality (mRS6). Additionally, we inspected patients having excellent outcome, functional independence outcome, and poor outcome, along with successful reperfusion and intracranial hemorrhage. We calculated pooled risk ratios (RRs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Evidence synthesis: A total of seven RCTs involving 2,392 patients were finally included. The chances of achieving successful reperfusion were significantly more with IVT+EVT as compared to EVT alone (RR: 0.97; 95% CI: 0.94, 1.00; P=0.03) (I²=0%). There was no significant difference in the number of patients having outcomes ranging from mRS0 to mRS6, excellent outcome, functional independence, poor outcome or incidence of intracranial hemorrhage, who underwent either EVT alone or IVT+EVT.

Conclusions: Additional trials are needed to determine if the absence of significant differences is due to insufficient sample size or if the combination therapy is truly not beneficial.