Thrombolytic treatment for acute ischemic stroke: a 2 year-experience at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital.

We studied 9 stroke patients who received a thrombolytic agent at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital. Six presented with stroke in the middle cerebral artery territory and three had basilar stroke. Seven patients were given intravenous thrombolysis and 2 received intra-arterial treatment. We strictly followed the inclusion and exclusion criteria for intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) rt-PA study. For patients receiving intraarterial thrombolysis, emergency angiograms were performed. Two patients with severe basilar stroke dramatically improved after intravenous thrombolysis and had very good outcome. Four patients with middle cerebral artery stroke became worse within 24 hours. Three of them died in the acute phase due to intracerebral hemorrhage (2 cases) and massive infarction with brain herniation (1 case). For intra-arterial treatment, good recanalization was seen but clinical improvement was insignificant. The result of thrombolytic treatment in this study was not so impressive, partly because we only treated the very severe cases. The efficacy of this treatment among our population needs to be further investigated.