Introduction: The acute vertebrobasilar occlussion is usually a life-treatening disease leading to death or major disability. The treatment with heparin and the selective fibrinolysis no show good results, for this reason the local intra-arterial fibrinolysis appear as the choice treatment in patients with stroke and a agiography with basilar artery occlussion or intracranial vertebral artery occlusion. This tecnique has been proved to be effective treatment for selected patients with acute thromboembolic occlusion of the middle cerebral artery, ophthalmic artery and vertebrobasilar system, reducing the mortality in the vertebrobasilar system from 90% to 40%.
Clinical case: We present a 63 years-old man with a vertebrobasilar thrombosis of a probable cardioembolic origen. He was treated with r-TPA local intra-arterial fibrinolysis, to get a recanalization of vertebrobasilar system. In the control TC we see a haemorragic sufusion in the brain stem. The follow-up see a patient with tetraparesis and palsy of the low cranial nerves and normal superior cerebral functions.
Conclusions: The local intra-arterial fibrinolysis is the choise treatment in the vertebrobasilar thrombosis because the high morbimortality of this patology and the inefficacy of the others therapeutics. The result depend of many factors as the thrombo location, the neurologic state, the evolution time, the start of treatment, the colateral circulation, the nervous tissue reserve, etc, that have dificult predict the result, but it is best of the natural history of the disease. Is necesary, change the concept of emergency and the attitude front the isquemic cerebral disease at the sanitary leaders, the doctors, and the general population, for dispose of more means to cofront this pathology, which permit diminish the morbimortality and reduce the grade of incapacity.