Endovascular treatment for cerebral venous thrombosis: current status, challenges, and opportunities

Abstract

Cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) mostly affects young people. So far, endovascular treatment (EVT) has not been shown to be beneficial in CVT, partially because venous EVT tools are not yet fully optimized, and therefore EVT is only used as a rescue treatment in rare cases. Identifying a subgroup of CVT patients that could benefit from EVT is challenging, given the milder course of disease compared with acute ischemic stroke, the paucity of data on prognostic factors (both in the clinical and imaging domain), and the lack of consensus on what constitutes 'technical success' in CVT EVT. In this review, we discuss the major obstacles that are encountered when trying to identify CVT patients that may benefit from EVT, and propose a roadmap that could help to overcome these challenges in the near future.