Thrombolytic Therapy for Acute Stroke — Not a Moment to Lose

Stroke, the most common cause of disability in the world among adults, remains the only neurologic disorder for which physicians are potentially able to completely reverse disabling deficits.1 Thrombolytic therapy, which can restore neurologic functions if given early enough, not only has stood the test of time, shown benefit in serial community registries on multiple continents, and received approval by every major regulatory authority in the world, but also has now — once again — been shown in a randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled trial to be efficacious. The results of the European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study III (ECASS III)2 (ClinicalTrials.gov number, . . .