Table 1 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria

•Patients >18 years with acute ischaemic stroke, with or without a visible arterial occlusion, and start of treatment within 4 ½ hours after stroke onset.

General exclusion criteria

•Patients with premorbid modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score ≥3

•Patients for whom a complete NIH Stroke Score cannot be obtained

•Hemiplegic migraine with no arterial occlusion on baseline CT

•Seizure at stroke onset and no visible occlusion on baseline CT

•Intracranial haemorrhage on baseline CT

•Clinical presentation suggesting subarachnoid haemorrhage even if baseline CT is normal

•Large areas of hypodense ischaemic changes on baseline CT

Patients with primary endovascular treatment

•Pregnancy or breast feeding, pericarditis, sepsis, any other serious medical illness likely to interact with treatment, confounding pre-existent neurological or psychiatric disease, unlikely to complete follow-up, any investigational drug <14 days

Specific sonothrombolysis/sonolysis exclusion criteria

•Known hypersensitivity or allergy to SonoVue®

•Recent or unstable coronary ischemia or resting angina <7 days

•Acute cardiac insufficiency, cardiac insufficiency class III/IV; serious cardiac arrhythmias

•Any right-left-shunt, severe pulmonary hypertension (PAP >90 mmHg) Moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), baseline O2 saturation <80 %)

•Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)