Intra-arterial stroke therapy: recanalization strategies, patient selection and imaging.

Overview

With more than 700,000 strokes per year resulting in greater than 160,000 deaths per year, stroke remains the leading cause of disability and third leading cause of death in the United States. Despite an overall decline in stroke mortality over the past 40 years, the total number of stroke deaths continues to increase, suggesting an increase in stroke incidence. The last 20 years of neuroscience advances have moved stroke from a condition that is monitored clinically and imaged serially as it evolves to an entity that can be treated acutely, with remarkable alterations in its natural history.