Time to thrombolysis and 35-day mortality

The importance of time to thrombolysis in acute myocardial infarction and the absolute reduction in 35-day mortality in a meta-analysis of over 50,000 patients. The benefit from thrombolytic therapy is greatest when it is administered within 2 hours of symptom onset. The survival benefit is progressively reduced as the delay in therapy increases; after 2 hours, the benefit from thrombolytic therapy fits a linear function (black dashed line) in which the benefit falls by approximately 1.6 lives per 1000 patients per hour of treatment delay.