SVIN’s MT-2020 Plus Study Analyzes Global Access to Mechanical Thrombectomy for Stroke Patients

March 17, 2023—The Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN) recently announced that it has released a first-ever global analysis of access to mechanical thrombectomy (MT) for treatment of large vessel occlusion stroke. The analysis is part of the SVIN Mission Thrombectomy study titled, “Mechanical Thrombectomy Global Access for Stroke (MT-GLASS): A Mission Thrombectomy (MT-2020 Plus) Study.”

SVIN’s Mission Thrombectomy: Global Access for Stroke Treatment seeks to change stroke systems of care by ensuring access to a mechanical thrombectomy as an option for treatment. More information is available online at missionthrombectomy2020.org/.

According to SVIN, the MT-GLASS study looked at worldwide access to the life-saving MT treatment and the factors that contribute to global access, including (1) income class of the country based on the World Bank classification; (2) proportion of a country’s gross domestic product spent on healthcare; (3) availability of MT infrastructure including MT operators and MT centers; (4) availability of reimbursement for MT; and (5) other relevant stroke systems of care policies.

The study was conducted throughout 75 countries using the Mission Thrombectomy global network of regions between November 2020 and February 2021 and received participation from 887 respondents in 67 countries.

The study found an extremely low global rate of MT access with an enormous disparity between countries by income level. The findings were published by Kaiz S. Asif, MD, et al online in Circulation.

“We believe that insights gained from this study would inform global interventions to improve access to this life-saving treatment and enable researchers to study nuances of the obstacles to it further,” commented Dr. Asif in the SVIN press release. “While we continue to work on innovations in surgical treatments and technologies, we are also determined to expedite their dissemination through Mission Thrombectomy to a large majority of people across the world to whom they are not yet available.”

Dr. Asif is Medical Director of Stroke and Neuro-endovascular Surgery at the Neuroscience Institute, Ascension Health in Chicago, Illinois, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at University of Illinois, Chicago.

Dileep Yavagal, MD, who is Chair of the Mission Thrombectomy initiative, past President and Cofounder of SVIN, and the study’s Senior Investigator, added, “The study findings validate why we founded Mission Thrombectomy in 2016 and our continued mission that has now grown to include 95 countries. The global access to thrombectomy is dismally low with the country's income level, prehospital protocols to bypass nonthrombectomy centers, and operators and thrombectomy center availability all playing critical roles in thrombectomy access in a given region.”

Dr. Yavagal is Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. He is also Director of Interventional Neurology; Codirector of Endovascular Neurosurgery; and Director of the Miller School’s neurological stem-cell platform.

Finally, SVIN President Ameer E. Hassan, DO, stated in the society’s press release, “Mechanical thrombectomy has proven to be a highly effective therapy for mitigating death and disability since 2015, and it is the largest advancement in stroke treatment in 30 years. Given the widely distributed global burden of stroke, it is critical to have rapid access to MT worldwide in an equitable manner. In the United States, stroke is now the number 5 killer but in the rest of the world it is still number 2! The findings highlight distressing results on a global scale and represent many lives that could have been saved or significantly improved with better access to thrombectomy treatments.”

Dr. Hassan is Professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and Head of Neuroscience at the Valley Baptist Neuroscience Institute in Harlingen, Texas.