Endovascular treatment of acute ischaemic stroke in octogenarians and nonagenarians compared with younger patients

Purpose: Endovascular therapy for emergent large vessel occlusion has been established as the standard approach for acute ischaemic stroke. However, the effectiveness and safety of endovascular therapy in the very elderly population has not been proved.

Objective: To determine the safety and effectiveness of endovascular therapy in octogenarians and nonagenarians.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed all patients who underwent endovascular therapy at two stroke centres between April 2012 and July 2018. Functional outcome was assessed using the modified Rankin scale at 90 days after stroke or at discharge. A favourable outcome was defined as a modified Rankin scale score of 0–2 or not worsening of the modified Rankin scale score before stroke. Outcome was compared between younger patients (aged 46–79 years, n = 40) and octogenarians and nonagenarians (aged 80–97 years, n = 19).

Results: Octogenarian and nonagenarian patients had pre-stroke functional deficit (modified Rankin scale score >1) more frequently than younger patients (57.9% vs. 20.0%, respectively, P = 0.0059). No difference was observed between very elderly and younger patients in the rate of successful reperfusion (89.5% vs. 67.5%, respectively, P = 0.11), favourable functional outcome (47.4% vs. 45.0%, respectively, P = 1.00) and mortality (21.1% vs. 27.5%, respectively, P = 1.00). On multiple regression analysis, successful reperfusion, concomitant use of intravenous thrombolysis, and out-of-hospital onset were independent predictors of favourable outcome (P = 0.0003, 0.015 and 0.028, respectively).

Conclusions: Successful reperfusion, concomitant use of intravenous thrombolysis, and out-of-hospital onset were clinical predictors of favourable outcome. However, we did not observe an age-dependent effect of clinical outcome after endovascular therapy.