Dear Editor-in-Chief:
I read with interest Quan et al.’s recent article, “Endovascular Treatment of Acute Intracranial Vertebrobasilar Artery Occlusion: A Multicenter Retrospective Observational Study” [1], which presented a multicenter retrospective observational study of endovascular treatment of acute intracranial vertebrobasilar artery occlusion (VBAO) to elucidate the efficacy of individualized endovascular treatment strategy for selected patients with acute VBAO. However, the last paragraph of the results asserts, “Of the 159 patients, 74 received tirofiban”, which differs from the results shown in Table 3: “tirofiban (n = 85)”. Additionally, the indication of tirofiban is stated as “in patients treated using primary or rescue balloon angioplasty”. However, this number is confusing given that “MT + rescue angioplasty (n = 43)” and “Angioplasty (or with stenting) (n = 27)” suggests that 70 patients received tirofiban. Finally, Table 3 would be more convincing if a comparison of baseline characteristics between groups treated with or without tirofiban were supplied.
I would very much appreciate it if Quan et al. may explain the discrepancies noted above. Thank you for your attention.
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Footnotes
This article is a reply to 10.1007/s00234-019-02282-1
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