Clot-selective coronary thrombolysis with tissue-type plasminogen activator.

Coronary thrombolysis, an intervention that can abort the sequelae of acute myocardial infarction, was accomplished within 10 minutes in dogs by intravenous administration of clot-selective, tissue-type plasminogen activator. In addition to inducing clot lysis, this promising fibrinolytic agent restored intermediary metabolism and nutritional myocardial blood flow, detectable noninvasively with positron tomography, without inducing a systemic fibrinolytic state.