Anticoagulant Therapy

This study, evaluating anticoagulant therapy in the treatment of cerebrovascular disease, was begun in 1956, using patients from the Cornell Medical College and Columbia University Medical College, medical services at Bellevue Hospital. Shortly after the onset of the study it was found that we would need to limit our evaluation to those patients with an already established stroke, as we saw very few patients with "transient ischemic attacks" or "progressing strokes." This was due to the fact that in our patient population patients with cerebrovascular disease tend to avoid hospitalization until a stroke is clearly evident with a hemiplegia or hemiparesis. The study was therefore designed to test the thesis that anticoagulant therapy is of value in the prevention of further thrombo-embolic phenomena such as second strokes, pulmonary emboli, and myocardial infarction in patients with an established stroke. Two previous reports of this study have been published.1,2The first