📖 ABSTRACT

Stroke is the second cause of death and major cause of disability worldwide. The most prevalent type of stroke is Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS), which occurs when a thrombus blocks a neck or intracranial artery. This blockage impairs perfusion to a portion of the brain causing ischemia, which, if not treated rapidly, leads to tissue infarction. With the slogan “time is brain”, the healthcare agencies emphasize the urgency in AIS treatment. Ideally, the blocked brain arteries need to be recanalized within 6 hours after the onset of the first symptoms.

If not treated, 80% of AIS patients are known to die or to become functionally disabled within 90 days from the onset of the symptoms. Nowadays, treatment of AIS has greatly improved thanks to endovascular thrombectomy (EVT), a minimally invasive surgery that consists in deploying a medical device (stent retriever) able to trap and quickly remove the clot in order to restore brain perfusion. Yet, still a significant part of AIS patients do not fully recover after EVT due to two principal reasons: 1) delays in the treatment pipeline and 2) suboptimal surgical planning in EVT due to the challenging time frame of this medical condition. This presentation focuses on two on-going developments aimed at improving, from one side, the treatment pipeline via a faster diagnostics and, from the other hand, providing at decision support tool for better surgical planning in EVT.