Reperfusion Therapies in Acute Ischemic Stroke

Acute Ischemic stroke (IS) remains a leading cause of mortality and long-term disability. Owing to the time-constraints, only a fraction of acute IS patients receive the established and approved thrombolytic therapy and a sizeable proportion of acute IS stroke survivors remain permanently disabled. Rapid advances in various recanalization strategies have aimed at improving functional outcome and reducing mortality. Existing literature on various treatment approaches, including the evolution of various thrombolytic agents and interventional devices is presented in this review. In addition to describing intravenous drug trials, continual developments in the field of trials for interventional devices have been described. Additionally, some of the important recent patents filed for various experimental approaches are presented. We strongly believe that the recent therapeutic approaches, including endovascular interventional strategies, based on advanced neuroimaging evaluations appear to have a promising future for acute IS patients.