Mothership vs. drip-and-ship: evaluation of initial treatment strategies for acute ischemic stroke in a well-developed network of specialized hospitals.

Functional outcome in patients treated with ET is comparable between the MS and DnS principles. Tendentially better outcome in the DnS subgroup may be explained by selection bias due to a higher willingness to apply ET in patients with worse baseline conditions (e.g. worse collateralization), if patients undergoing MS are already on site.