Thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke: still a treatment for the few by the few

Abstract

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) trialwas groundbreaking.1It demonstrated that stroke patients could be admitted to hospital, scanned,and treated within 3 hours of stroke, a major achievement in the early 1990s.The Food and Drug Administration accepted the NINDS evidence (actuallyconducted as 2 consecutive trials, only 1 of which gave positive results) andlicensed recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) for the treatment ofstroke.