BACKGROUND In acute myocardial infarction patients who do not reperfuse their infarct arteries shortly after thrombolytic treatment have a high morbidity and mortality. Management of this high risk group remains problematic, especially in centres without access to interventional cardiology. Additional thrombolytic treatment may result in reperfusion and improved left ventricular function. MET...

A. AMERY, J. VERMYLEN, AND M. VERSTRAETE (Leuven University, Belgium) This study compares the effect on fibrinogen and plasminogen levels of the infusion of a high (1,200,000 units) and medium (250,000 units) standardized initial dose of streptokinase. In both groups the administration of the initial dose was followed by a continuous infusion of 100,000 units of streptokinase per hour. Immediat...

BACKGROUND Standard treatment for pleural infection includes catheter drainage and antibiotics. Tube drainage often fails if the fluid is loculated by fibrinous adhesions when surgical drainage is needed. Streptokinase may aid the process of pleural drainage, but there have been no controlled trials to assess its efficacy. METHODS Twenty four patients with infected community acquired parapneu...

BACKGROUND Acute myocardial infarction is one of the leading causes of death in the elderly, however clinical data reveals a disproportionately lower use of thrombolytics because of fear of complications especially intracranial haemorrhage. Our objective was to evaluate the safety of most commonly used thrombolytic streptokinase in elderly patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction. ...

We studied recanalization of an obstructed left circumflex coronary artery by streptokinase in open-chest anesthetized dogs. Thrombotic occlusion was induced by a 100 microA anodal current selectively delivered to the intimal surface of the vessel. Intracoronary streptokinase (50,000 U) or saline was infused over a 50-min period beginning at either 30 min or 90 min after occlusion. Continuous r...

Introduction: Acute myocardial infarction is one of the major causes of mortality in developing countries such as Iran. One of the most important progresses in acute myocardial infarction is early administration of therombolytic agents such as streptokinase. This study was performed to determine the time interval from patients’ referral to the emergency wards to the introduction of thrombolytic...

background: we sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the different trade forms of streptokinase available in our country, namely heberkinasa (heberbiotec, havana, cuba) and streptase (aventis behring gmbh, marburg, germany). methods: we conducted a double-blind randomized clinical trial to compare the two streptokinase formulations, i.e. heberkinasa (hbk) or streptase (stp), in patients...

Thrombolytic therapy has been shown to improve clinical outcome when administered early after the onset of symptoms of acute myocardial infarction; the mechanism of benefit is believed to be reestablishment and maintenance of coronary artery patency. Anistreplase is a second generation thrombolytic agent that is easily administered and has a long duration of action. To compare anistreplase (30 ...

I would like to comment about Heberkinasa (recombinant streptokinase): one of the preparations included in the article written by Dr Hermentin et al. 1 The quality control system of the Center of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology has been successfully evaluated by the World Health Organization and another International Regulatory Organizations. The biological activity of the Heberkinasa bat...

Streptokinase (STK) is clinically used world-wide as a thrombolytic agent to treat patients with acute myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, arterial thrombosis and embolism [1-3]. The structure of STK consists of a 414 amino acids polypeptide chain with a molecular mass of 47 kDa. The protein exhibits its maximum activity at a pH of approximately 7.5 and its pI is 4.7. Most of the nativ...