Stroke is a frequent and severe disease worldwide, representing the second leading cause of death and the leading cause of acquired disability. Over the last thirty years, reperfusion therapies have transformed the prognosis of ischemic stroke. For patients with acute ischemic stroke due to large-vessel occlusion (LVOS) and a small- to moderate-sized irreversibly injured tissue (core), the recommended treatment consists of intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) followed by mechanical thrombectomy (MT). However, for the fifth of LVOS patients with large core, MT has demonstrated its effectiveness, but the benefits of prior IVT remain unclear. In fact, no randomized trial has compared IVT+MT and MT alone in this population.
Tenecteplase is increasingly replacing alteplase for LVOS due to two key advantages. First, it is administered as a single intravenous bolus, which speeds up treatment and transfers. Second, it improves reperfusion and functional outcomes in LVOS patients without large core. Emerging real-world evidence with tenecteplase reports lower rates of symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage than alteplase, suggesting superior overall efficacy. To date, no randomized trial has explored the benefit of tenecteplase in LVOS patients with large core.
The IVT ALL IN trial is a French multicenter open randomized controlled trial with two parallel groups (IVT with tenecteplase followed by MT \[IVT+MT\] vs MT alone) and blinded endpoint assessment following a PROBE design. Its main objective is to assess which treatment strategy between IVT+MT and MT alone has a superior efficacy in terms of 3-month good functional outcome, defined as a modified Rankin scale (mRS) score ≤ 3 at 3 months, for LVOS patients with large core of the anterior circulation. Our trial will provide high-level evidence on the optimal reperfusion treatment strategy for LVOS patients with large ischemic core, who currently still have a low likelihood of achieving a favorable neurological outcome.