Low-dose intravenous recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator therapy for patients with stroke outside European indications: Stroke Acute Management with Urgent Risk-factor Assessment and Improvement (SAMURAI) rtPA Registry.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the safety and efficacy of intravenous recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator (0.6 mg/kg alteplase) within 3 hours of stroke onset in Japanese patients outside the indications in the European license. Of the 600 patients who were treated with recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator, 422 met the inclusion criteria of the European license (IN group) and 178 did not (OUT group). The OUT group was inversely associated with any intracerebral hemorrhage (adjusted OR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.29-0.84), positively associated with an unfavorable outcome (2.48; 1.55-3.94) and mortality (2.04; 1.02-4.04), and not associated with symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (0.53; 0.11-1.79) or complete independency (0.65; 0.40-1.03) after multivariate adjustment. Functional and vital outcomes 3 months after low-dose recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator in patients outside the European indications were less favorable compared with those included in the indications; however, the risk of intracerebral hemorrhage was not.