Objective: To identify interventions for the treatment of acute ischemic stroke after cardiac surgery and to report the efficacy of these treatments.
Design: Systematic review and narrative synthesis PARTICIPANTS: Patients with ischemic stroke after cardiac surgery.
Interventions: Treatment efficacy of intra-arterial thrombolysis (IAT) and/or endovascular mechanical thrombectomy (EMT).
Methods and main results: The MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid), Scopus (Elsevier), and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Wiley) databases were searched from January 1, 1990, until September 20, 2018. After reviewing 5,231 records, 8 case reports/series and 2 retrospective studies were included (n = 33). Three of these reports (n = 19) published between 2001 and 2003 described IAT, and 6 studies (n = 14) published between 2015 and 2019 reported the use of EMT. In the 19 patients who received IAT, 3 (16%) had good, 8 (42%) had moderate, and 8 (42%) had poor neurologic outcomes. In the 14 patients who received EMT, 7 (50%) had good, 5 (36%) had moderate, and 2 (14%) had poor neurologic outcomes.
Conclusions: Endovascular thrombectomy, with or without IAT, is being used increasingly with success in patients presenting with postcardiac surgery stroke. However, the number of patients reported is too small to confidently understand its overall effect on neurologic outcomes in this setting.
Keywords: acute ischemic stroke; cardiac surgery; intra-arterial thrombolysis; large- vessel occlusion; mechanical thrombectomy.
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