The safety and effectiveness of endovascular treatment for patients with vertebrobasilar artery occlusions: according to the BEST and BASICS criteria.

"Competing interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article."

"Funding: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported in part by Key Research and Development Plan Projects of Anhui Province (No. 202104j07020049), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WK9110000056), and High-level Talents Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project of Quanzhou Science and Technology Bureau (No. 2018C049R)."

"The study was conducted based on the PostErior ciRculation iSchemIc Stroke regisTry (PERSIST), a multicenter EVT registry program of VBAO patients treated with EVT in China (registration: URL: http://www.chictr.org.cn/; unique identifier: ChiCTR2000033211). The study was approved by the ethics committee of First Affiliated Hospital of University of Science and Technology of China (2020KY-40). Due to its retrospective nature, the need for patient consent was waived. The details of the registry have been published elsewhere. In brief, it is a multicenter retrospective registry program of consecutive posterior circulation ischemic stroke patients with acute, symptomatic, radiologically confirmed VBAO (basilar artery occlusion or vertebral artery occlusion resulting in no flow to the basilar artery) who were treated with EVT. The inclusion and exclusion criteria of the registry along with the BEST and BASICS selection criteria are listed in Table s1."