TY - JOUR T1 - Thrombolysis improves 90-day functional outcome in acute ischaemic stroke, even in very older people JF - Evidence Based Medicine JO - Evid Based Med SP - 136 LP - 137 DO - 10.1136/ebm1302 VL - 16 IS - 5 AU - Marta Rubiera Y1 - 2011/10/01 UR - http://ebm.bmj.com/content/16/5/136.abstract N2 - Commentary on: Mishra NK, Ahmed N, Andersen G, et al.; VISTA collaborators; SITS collaborators. Thrombolysis in very elderly people: controlled comparison of SITS International Stroke Thrombolysis Registry and Virtual International Stroke Trials Archive. BMJ 2010;341:c6046OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text. Incidence of acute stroke in older people is continuously growing. However, treatment with intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in this group of patients is still scarce.1 The majority of clinical trials using thrombolytic treatment have excluded very older people, and although the last European Stroke Organization (ESO) Guidelines support intravenous tPA treatment without age-limit (class III, level C), the terms of tPA-labelled indications do not include patients ≥80 years.2 The study by Mishra and colleagues aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of intravenous tPA according to age, especially in very older people, controlled by patients with similar stroke severity without tPA treatment. This is a large retrospective comparison of two different registers of stroke treatments. A total 23 334 tPA-patients were selected from the SITS–ISTR (Safe Implementation of Treatment in Stroke–International Stroke … ER -