Background: It is well established that thrombolytic therapy improves the functional recovery by reducing
disability measured as National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) and Rankin score in patients with ischemic
stroke. However, the role of alteplase treatment on anxiety and depression in those patients is less clear. Therefore, the
aim of this study was to determine whether patients treated with thrombolytic therapy had a better quality of life, less
anxiety and depression compared to patients who were not treated with thrombolysis.
Subjects and methods: In this “single canter study” 60 patients with acute is chemic stroke were divided into two
groups: alteplase treated (AT) group, and not treated (NT) group. The sociodemographic data including gender, age,
marital status, education, employment, financial status, place of residence, refugee status were collected at the
beginning of study. The NIHSS score and modified Rankin score (mRS) were performed on admission and at discharge
from hospital. Six months following discard from hospital the Beck’s Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck’s Depression
Inventory (BDI) and the Short Form 36 quality of life (SF-36 QoL) were performed.
Results: There were no differences in mean NIHSS and mRS at admission to hospital between the groups. At
discharge from hospital patients in AT group had significantly lower NIHSS and mRS than patients in NT group. In
post-stroke period the patients from AT group had significantly less anxiety and depression than patients from NT group
(BAI in AT 6.4+4.17 vs BAI in NT 14.27+7.0l and BDI in AT 9.20+6.61 vs BDI in NT 18.0+7.49). Patients in AT group
had significantly better SF-36 QoL score in all components than NT group.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that thrombolytic therapy reduced the intensity of anxiety and
depression and improves the quality of life of patients six months after ischemic stroke.
