Anesthetic management of endovascular treatment of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) can have a significant impact on these patients’ long-term outcome. Lately, anesthetic management of AIS patients has received increasing interest with anesthesiologists, neurologists and neurointerventionalists. Because of the importance of anesthesiologists’ involvement in these procedures, and because the available literature does not provide adequate guidance to clinicians, the Society of Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care (SNACC) formed a task force to write a consensus statement on anesthetic management of endovascular treatment of acute ischemic stroke. The following is a synopsis of a few of the topics worked on by the task force (Drs. Sergio Bergese, Eric Heyer, Deepak Sharma, Pekka Talke).
Each year, more than 400,000 people in the U.S. have an ischemic stroke. Endovascular treatment of AIS is a relatively new field of medicine. The first FDA-approved therapy (1996), which is still the first line of treatment today,...