The “Golden Hour” of tPA

As part of every Genentech-sponsored CME or medical school curriculum presentation on thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke, you see a graph like this:

This is the “time is brain” mantra, where every supposed passing second without flow destroys another mass quantity of brain cells.  The theory: on the edge of the infarcted brain tissue, there remains yet a thin rim of cells between vascular territories, just barely hanging on.  Timely reperfusion saves these cells – and tPA increases recanalization rates incrementally beyond control, in certain patients, and in certain vessels.  However, again, in certain patients, and in certain vessels, the tPA results in serious intracranial bleeding.  This risk/benefit trade-off remains a cornerstone controversy in Emergency Medicine and Neurology, owing to the paucity of unbiased clinical trial data.

But, most patients eligible for tPA arrive at the hospital far at the low end of the curve – where the time-dependent effects are weakening.  As such, the new magic is to take the tPA to the patient – delivering thrombolysis in a van down by the river.  The STEMO from Germany, and its PHANTOM-S project, paved the way for other “mobile stroke units”.  This report aims to evaluate the “Golden Hour” of stroke thrombolysis – patients receiving tPA within 1-hour of symptom onset – where the time-is-brain ought wholeheartedly manifest.

Ah, but, so – such an effect, unfortunately, was not conclusively observed.  Comparing 78 patients who received tPA in fewer than 60 minutes (median 50 minutes) with 451 patients receiving tPA in greater than 60 minutes (median 105 minutes), these data support no useful conclusions regarding the effectiveness of such timely delivery.  The unadjusted analysis shows no difference in outcomes between groups, but, alas, the groups are grossly imbalanced.  Adjusted analyses, in their crude adjustments, tend towards benefit in the <60 minute cohort, but such post-hoc comparisons can only be considered exploratory.  Of course, the accompanying editorial “Prehospital Thrombolysis for Stroke: An Idea Whose Golden Hour Has Arrived” cleanly ignores the adjusted nature of these data, and definitively endorses the observed benefit.

Considering pre-hospital thrombolysis provides such excellent opportunity to truly test the time-is-brain hypothesis, it’s a shame its proponents are not taking such an uncritical view of the opportunity for study.

“Effects of Golden Hour Thrombolysis: A Prehospital Acute Neurological Treatment and Optimization of Medical Care in Stroke (PHANTOM-S) Substudy”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25402214