Outcomes of Endovascular Thrombectomy for Basilar Artery Occlusion
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Large prospective observational studies have cast doubt on the common assumption that endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) is superior to intravenous thrombolysis for patients with acute basilar artery occlusion (BAO). The purpose of this study was to retrospectively review our experience for patients with BAO undergoing EVT with modern endovascular devices. METHODS: All consecutive patients undergoing EVT with either a second-generation stent retriever or direct aspiration thrombectomy for BAO at our regional stroke center from January 1, 2013 to March 1, 2019 were included. The primary outcome measure was functional outcome at 1 month using the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the association between patient characteristics and dichotomized mRS. RESULTS: A total of 43 consecutive patients underwent EVT for BAO. The average age was 67 years with 61% male patients. Overall, 37% (16/43) of patients achieved good functional outcome. Successful reperfusion was achieved in 72% (31/43) of cases. The median (interquartile range) stroke onset to treatment time was 420 (270-639) minutes (7 hours) for all patients. The procedure-related complication rate was 9% (4/43). On multivariate analysis, posterior circulation Alberta stroke program early computed tomography score and Basilar Artery on Computed Tomography Angiography score were associated with improved functional outcome. CONCLUSION: EVT appears to be safe and feasible in patients with BAO. Our finding that time to treatment and successful reperfusion were not associated with improved outcome is likely due to including patients with established infarcts. Given the variability of collaterals in the posterior circulation, the paradigm of utilizing a tissue window may assist in patient selection for EVT. Magnetic resonance imaging may be a reasonable option to determine the extent of ischemia in certain situations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".