Neuropathological Findings After Thrombolytic Therapy in Acute Ischemic Stroke

Thrombolytic therapy (TT) in acute ischemic stroke is a rather experimental form of treatment. Therefore it is desirable to gain as much as possible information about every individual patient. One source of information in patients with acute ischemic stroke is a detailed autopsy study. Twenty-two patients were submitted for TT from 1985 to 1989. A quantity of 100 mg intravenous recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rt-PA) was administered within 3h, and only one patient received urokinase (case 1). Seventeen patients presented with basilar artery (BA) occlusion. A postmortem was performed in 10 of 11 patients who died and in 2 who died after middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion. The clinical and postmortem findings from these 12 patients are summarized in Table 1.