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Updated: Mar 8, 2026
Optimized Management of Endovascular Treatment for Acute Ischemic Stroke
Published on: January 18, 2018
Trends in Recruitment Rates for Acute Stroke Trials, 1990-2014
William B Feldman1, Anthony S Kim2, Winston Chiong2
1From the Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA (W.B.F.); Department of Neurology, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco (A.S.K, W.C.); and the University of California, San Francisco Memory and Aging Center (W.C.). wbfeldman@partners.org.
Background And Purpose:
Slow recruitment in acute stroke trials hampers the evaluation of new therapies and delays the adoption of effective therapies into clinical practice. This systematic review evaluates whether recruitment efficiency and rates have increased in acute stroke trials from 1990 to 2014.
Methods:
Acute stroke trials from 2010 to 2014 were identified by a search of PubMed, Medline, the Cochrane Database of Research in Stroke, and the Stroke Trials Registry. These trials were compared to a previously published data set of trials conducted from 1990 to 2004.
Results:
The median recruitment efficiency of trials from 1990 to 2004 was 0.41 participants/site/month compared with 0.26 participants/site/month from 2010 to 2014 (P=0.14). The median recruitment rate of trials from 1990 to 2004 was 26.8 participants/month compared with 19.0 participants/month from 2010 to 2014 (P=0.13).
Conclusions:
For acute stroke trials, neither recruitment efficiency nor recruitment rates have increased over the past 25 years and, if anything, have declined.
