Remote Ischemic Conditioning Intervention After Moderate Ischemic Stroke

Remote ischemic conditioning refers to the protective strategy of cycling between ischemia and reperfusion in one vascular territory (e.g., the arms) with the goal of inducing ischemic tolerance in a remote target tissue (e.g., the brain) to improve outcomes. Small clinical trials have been inconclusive. In the largest randomized controlled trial to date, investigators recruited 1893 patients from 55 centers in China with acute moderate ischemic stroke (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, 6–16) within the previous 48 hours and randomly assigned them to usual guideline-based care with or without remote ischemic conditioning. Patients treated with intravenous thrombolysis or stroke thrombectomy were excluded. The open-label inte…