A study in China showed that approximately 1 in 5 stroke patients in China who had a stroke that occurred within 3 hours received thrombolytic therapy. Time from onset to thrombolysis initiation, time from admission to thrombolysis initiation, and especially time from imaging to thrombolysis initiation were significantly longer than in developed countries. Reducing prehospital and emergency room response times would help increase the extent of transvenous recombinant tissue-type fibrinogen activator (rt-PA) use in China. The study was published online April 21, 2011 in Stroke. The China National Stroke Registry (CNSR) study is the only nationwide stroke registry study funded by the Chinese government and includes 132 urban hospitals. All patients who were eligible for transvenous rt-PA were included in the analysis. The investigators compared the time from onset to the start of thrombolysis and the time from admission to the start of thrombolysis in emergency departments in China and developed countries. The results showed that a total of 14702 patients with ischemic stroke were included in the CNSR study between September 2007 and August 2008. Of the 11675 stroke patients with a known stroke onset time, 2514 (21.5%) were admitted to the emergency department within 3 hours, 1469 (12.6%) were eligible for thrombolysis, and 284 (2.4%) were eventually treated, 181 (1.6%) of whom were treated with transvenous rt-PA. median time from onset to thrombolysis initiation was 180 minutes. The median time from admission to the start of thrombolysis was 116 minutes, and the median time from imaging to the start of thrombolysis was 90 minutes. Patients who were younger, reached the emergency department sooner, had higher National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores, higher income, and higher educational attainment had a better chance of receiving transvenous rt-PA.