ABSTRACT
The underlying rationale of acute stroke treatment is mainly based on the lysis of a clot/thrombus occluding a vessel in the cerebrovascular system in order to achieve recanalization and possibly restore cerebral perfusion. The success of any therapeutic effort depends on many factors with a high variability on individual basis, such as duration of ischemia, degree of revascularization, efciency of collateral circulation, stroke subtype, blood pressure, and serum glucose levels (Segura et al., 2008; Frendl and Csiba, 2011). In these last decades, many thrombolytic strategies have been tested. In this chapter, we focus on the benets and harms of pharmacological thrombolysis.
