Interventional Management of Stroke Study III (IMS III)

Abington Memorial Hospital is one of only a handful of non-university hospitals in the U.S., Canada and Australia to be selected to enroll patients in a clinical trial to advance the treatment of stroke.

The “Interventional Management of Stroke,” or “IMS-III” trial is a phase III clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). Qaisar A. Shah, MD, director, Neurointerventional and Neurocritical Care, serves as a principal investigator in the study, which will follow 900 individuals who have experienced moderate to severe ischemic stroke.

The trial will compare two different treatment approaches – combined intravenous (IV) and intra-arterial (IA) treatment including recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rT-PA) versus standard intravenous rT-PA – in restoring blood flow to the brain. The goal is to determine if individuals with ischemic stroke treated with rT-PA using a combined IV/IA approach to recanalization started within three hours of onset are more likely to have a better outcome than individuals treated with standard IV rT-PA alone.