Background: Endovascular thrombectomy eligibility is expanding to patients with more extensive ischemic injury based on the results of randomised trials.
Aims: We aimed to investigate the effect of ischemic core volume on functional outcomes with endovascular thrombectomy versus medical management in the SELECT-2 randomised trial.
Methods: SELECT-2 randomised 352 patients with >50mL ischemic core on CT-perfusion and/or ASPECTS 3-5 on non-contrast CT to endovascular thrombectomy versus medical management 0-24h after stroke onset. CT-perfusion was processed with RAPID software using a relative cerebral blood flow threshold <30% of normal brain to estimate ischemic core. The region of pre-treatment non-contrast CT hypodensity was also manually outlined. Follow-up infarct lesions on diffusion MRI or CT scans were also outlined. The treatment effect of thrombectomy on the ordinal modified Rankin scale (mRS) and mRS 0-2/0-3 dichotomies will be analysed in subgroups of ischemic core volume categorised as <70mL, 70-100mL, 100-150mL and >150mL using CT-perfusion, non-contrast CT or the larger of the two. The probability of mRS 0-2 and 0-3 with successful endovascular reperfusion across a spectrum of core volume, age and time to treatment will be presented using heat-map plots to assist clinical prognostication. Infarct growth and the rates of overestimation of baseline ischemic core volumes will be reported.
Results: Data have been collated and re-processed. Late-breaking results will be ready for presentation at the conference.
Conclusion: The decision to treat patients with very large ischemic core volumes can be challenging. These data will clarify the effect of thrombectomy in the larger range of ischemic core volumes.