Xu G, et al. - This prospective study was performed to compare neurological and cognitive functions after thrombectomy in mild to moderate anterior circulation infarction patients selected by multimodal neuroimaging. The physicians revealed that in patients with mild to moderate acute ischemic stroke (AIS), mechanical thrombectomy could significantly improve neurological and cognitive functions at broadened therapeutic window under multimodal CT and multimodal MRI imaging.

• The physicians recruited 90 patients from January 2016 to March 2017 consecutively.
• They evaluated neurological function by NIHSS before thrombectomy, and 6 h, 24 h, 7 days, 90 days after mechanical thrombectomy.
• They assessed cognitive functions by Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Hachinski Ischemic Scale.

• Compared to the standard therapy group, patients who received mechanical thrombectomy had significantly better neurological functions at 6 h (p < 0.001), 24 h (p < 0.001), 7 days (p < 0.001), and 90 days (p < 0.001), as well as cognitive functions evaluated by MoCA (26.23 ± 3.85 vs 24.62 ± 2.25, p=0.022, n = 85) and MMSE (26.65 ± 2.77 vs 25.10 ± 2.36, p=0.023, n = 85).