Mechanical thrombectomy in children and adolescents: report of five cases and literature review.
Background
Paediatric arterial ischaemic stroke is an important cause of morbidity and mortality among children. Currently, there are no recommendations regarding mechanical thrombectomy in children despite overwhelming evidence of improved outcomes in adults. Therefore, the need for individual case reports and case series is important to highlight potential advantages and disadvantages in this approach.


Case descriptions
We retrospectively searched our prospectively maintained database of patients undergoing mechanical thrombectomy for ischaemic stroke. We describe five children, aged between 7 and 17, who underwent mechanical thrombectomy for acute ischaemic stroke. We provide an account of their clinical presentations, operative treatment and postoperative outcome.


Discussion
Mechanical thrombectomy in children, especially older children, can be performed safely and with existing devices. Although a randomised controlled trial would provide compelling evidence of the potential advantages to this technique, the lack of this should not prevent the use of this procedure by trained neurointerventionists.
['Bhogal|Pervinder|P|0000-0002-5514-5237', 'Hellstern|Victoria|V|', 'AlMatter|Muhammad|M|0000-0002-6405-656X', 'Ganslandt|Oliver|O|', 'Bäzner|Hansjörg|H|', 'Aguilar Pérez|Marta|M|', 'Henkes|Hans|H|']
D000293:Adolescent D000367:Age Factors D002648:Child D016208:Databases, Factual D005260:Female D006801:Humans D000083242:Ischemic Stroke D008297:Male D020127:Recovery of Function D012189:Retrospective Studies D017131:Thrombectomy D016896:Treatment Outcome
thrombectomy paediatrics stroke