Inclusion criteria |
•Patients >18 years with acute ischaemic stroke, with or without a visible arterial occlusion, and start of treatment within 4 ½ hours after stroke onset. |
General exclusion criteria |
•Patients with premorbid modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score ≥3 |
•Patients for whom a complete NIH Stroke Score cannot be obtained |
•Hemiplegic migraine with no arterial occlusion on baseline CT |
•Seizure at stroke onset and no visible occlusion on baseline CT |
•Intracranial haemorrhage on baseline CT |
•Clinical presentation suggesting subarachnoid haemorrhage even if baseline CT is normal |
•Large areas of hypodense ischaemic changes on baseline CT |
Patients with primary endovascular treatment |
•Pregnancy or breast feeding, pericarditis, sepsis, any other serious medical illness likely to interact with treatment, confounding pre-existent neurological or psychiatric disease, unlikely to complete follow-up, any investigational drug <14 days |
Specific sonothrombolysis/sonolysis exclusion criteria |
•Known hypersensitivity or allergy to SonoVue® |
•Recent or unstable coronary ischemia or resting angina <7 days |
•Acute cardiac insufficiency, cardiac insufficiency class III/IV; serious cardiac arrhythmias |
•Any right-left-shunt, severe pulmonary hypertension (PAP >90 mmHg) Moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), baseline O2 saturation <80 %) |
•Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) |