Outcomes of general anesthesia versus conscious sedation for Stroke undergoing endovascular treatment: a meta-analysis

Background: The impact of anesthesia strategy on the outcomes of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients undergoing endovascular treatment is currently controversy. Thus, we performed this meta-analysis to compare the differences of clinical and angiographic outcomes between general anesthesia (GA) and conscious sedation (CS).

Methods: A literature search in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Knowledge databases through February 2019 was conducted for related records on GA and CS of AIS undergoing endovascular treatment. The results of the studies were pooled and meta-analyzed with fixed- or random-effect model based on heterogeneity test in total and subgroup analyses.

Results: Twenty-three studies including 6703 patients were analyzed in this meta-analysis. We found that patients in the GA group have lower odds of favorable functional outcome (mRS scores ≤2) compared with the CS group (odds ratio [OR] = 0.62, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.49-0.77), and higher risk of mortality (OR = 1.68, 95% CI: 1.49-1.90), pneumonia (OR = 1.78, 95% CI: 1.40-2.26), symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (OR = 1.64, 95% CI: 1.13-2.37). However, no significant differences were seen between the groups in the rate of recanalization (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 0.89-1.28), vessel dissection or perforation (OR = 1.00, 95% CI: 0.98-1.03) and asymptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (OR = 1.19, 95% CI: 0.96-1.47). While in the RCT subgroup analysis, we found patients in the GA group does not show lower rate of favorable functional outcome compared with the CS group (OR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.17-2.89). And there was no significant difference in the rate of mortality between GA and CS groups during RCT subgroup analysis (OR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.43-1.27).

Conclusions: AIS patients performed endovascular treatment under GA compared with CS was associated with worse functional outcome and increased rate of mortality, but differences in worsened outcomes do not exist when one looks into the GA vs. CS RCTs. Moreover, these findings are mainly based on the retrospective studies and additional multi-center randomized controlled trials to definitively address these issues is warranted.