Original ArticleOlder Age Does Not Increase Risk of Hemorrhagic Complications after Intravenous and/or Intra-Arterial Thrombolysis for Acute Stroke
Section snippets
Patients
We selected patients from the Brain Attack Database at University Hospitals of Cleveland, Ohio. This database was prospectively collected between October 1993 and May 2006 and contained information on evaluation and treatment of all patients with symptoms suggestive of acute stroke. Written informed consent for data collection was obtained from patients or from their next of kin at the time of initial interview. For hypothesis analysis we selected patients who received thrombolytic therapy with
Demographics
We analyzed data from 488 patients who were treated with thrombolytic therapy for acute ischemic stroke. Patient population characteristics are summarized in Table 1. There were significantly more women in the older cohort of patients, which could be a result of increased prevalence of acute ischemic stroke in older women. Older patients were more likely to have a diagnosis of hypertension and less likely to smoke. There was also a greater percent of younger patients who received urokinase.
Population Characteristics
Discussion
Our retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data indicates that older patients do not experience an increased risk of intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) after thrombolytic therapy. We evaluated outcomes for elderly patients not only after IV thrombolysis within 3 hours but also after IV/IA or IA therapy up to 6 hours from the onset of symptoms. The results of our analysis indicate that there is no age-dependent association of symptomatic hemorrhage with IV, IV/IA, or IA therapies.
As shown
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