Do you remember EXTEND-IA? Or EXTEND-IA TNK? This is, well, their neglected little brother, regular old EXTEND, stumbling along to “completion” and publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, as is apparently their birthright.
EXTEND-IA was part of the enormously important series of trials launching the endovascular revolution for acute ischemic stroke. EXTEND-IA TNK is another piece of evidence probably pushing us slowly, inexorably, towards tenecteplase rather than alteplase. This, despite its provocatively titled editorial, is not a grand event.
This trial, which started enrolling way back in 2010, essentially mirrors EXTEND-IA, but gives alteplase to patients with a mismatch on perfusion imaging, rather than referring them to thrombectomy. Over 8 years at 16 centers, mostly in Asia-Pacific, the authors were able to randomize a mere 113 patients to alteplase and 112 to placebo. The primary outcome, a modified Rankin Scale of 0 or 1 at 90 days, favored the alteplase cohort, 35.4% to 29.5%. Deaths, partly related to a 6% absolute excess of intracranial hemorrhage, were higher in those treated with alteplase, 11.5% vs 8.9%. The efficacy results do not meet statistical significance prior to adjustment, but the median NIHSS was 12 for alteplase and 10 for placebo. So, you can probably guess the bulk of their discussion focuses on their adjusted effect size, which does reach statistical significance at 1.44 (1.01 – 2.06). Interestingly enough, this wasn’t their original planned adjusted analysis – the 95% CI for that traditional logistic regression crosses unity at 0.99 – leading to questions whether this fortuitous p-value is innocent serendipity, or found because it was findable.
Regardless, this trial – stopped early, per the authors, because of the publication of WAKE-UP – is already mostly obsolete. Systems of stroke care have changed immensely since this trial was planned. About 80% of patients in this trial had large vessel occlusions on imaging – patients who in this modern era would simply go straight to thrombectomy. These results do not support the use of alteplase as an alternative to thrombectomy, as recanalization rates – as we’ve known forever – are simply not good enough with medical therapy. Therefore, in modern systems of stroke care, this trial probably has zero effect on care. The better approach to tailoring treatment to individual patient heterogeneity in our modern systems is to find new ways of integrating MRI into the rapid assessment of stroke.
However, much of the world does not have access to timely thrombectomy for stroke, for a variety of reasons. In rest of the world, in that narrow slice with a modern system for acute evaluation with perfusion imaging and alteplase administration, but not timely thrombectomy, then you could consider changing protocols to include alteplase administration like here in EXTEND. It is not clear from these data whether generalization of these data to such lower-resource settings would accurately reflect effectiveness and safety, but that is the conceivable application of these results. Then, you have to consider the typical disclaimers affecting the reliability of their presented findings:
Dr. Parsons reports receiving consulting fees from Apollo Medical Imaging Technology, Boehringer Ingelheim, Canon Medical Systems, and Siemens; Dr. Wong, receiving grant support, paid to Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, from Boehringer Ingelheim; Dr. Sabet, receiving travel support from Boehringer Ingelheim; Dr. Christensen, holding stock in Ischema- view; Dr. Mitchell, receiving lecture fees from Medtronic USA and Stryker; Dr. Thijs, receiving advisory board fees from Amgen and Bristol-Myers Squibb, advisory board fees and lecture fees from Bayer and Pfizer, advisory board fees, lecture fees, and travel support from Boehringer Ingelheim, and advisory board fees and travel support from Medtronic; Dr. Meretoja, receiving advisory board fees, lecture fees, and travel support from Boehringer Ingelheim and Stryker; Dr. Davis, receiving advisory board fees from AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim; and Dr. Donnan, receiving advisory board fees from AstraZeneca Australia, Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck, Pfizer, and Servier.
At the minimum, at least, it is another bit of evidence regarding the importance of salvageable brain for the utility of any intervention for stroke – a principle that probably ought be applied for those treated within 4.5 hours of stroke, as well.
“Thrombolysis Guided by Perfusion Imaging up to 9 Hours
after Onset of Stroke”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1813046
“Image-Guided Intravenous Alteplase for Stroke — Shattering a Time Window”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe1904791
Addendum 5/15/09: Minor updates in response to Twitter discussion and comments below.
T hanksagain for your good work keeping us all sane in the thrombolytics and stroke world!
Great post Rayan!
The research question is to identify the subgroup that benefit most lytics with less harm, probably those with salvageable tissue.
Thanks for your effort to reveal literature traps.
Thanks, as always, for your helpful analysis and perspective. Not that I am gung-ho for late tPA, but I think it is important to clarify a statement in your summary.
“Deaths, primarily due to a 6% absolute excess of intracranial hemorrhage, were higher in those treated with alteplase, 11.5% vs 8.9%.”
When I dug into the Supplementary Appendix, there were 13 deaths in patients receiving alteplase: ischemic stroke progression/malignant cerebral edema (n=5); aspiration pneumonia (n=4); septic or cardiogenic shock (n=2). Deaths attributed to symptomatic ICH occurred in 2/13 (15.4%). So, it’s not accurate to claim the higher death rate in the alteplase group was driven primarily by ICH.
Good follow-up – thanks for clarifying and correcting!