New Breakthrough In Treating Strokes

Researchers in the Netherlands have discovered a treatment that improves the prognosis for people who have the most severe and disabling strokes.  By directly removing large blood clots blocking blood vessels in the brain, they are able to save brain tissue that would otherwise have died, in turn enabling many to return to an independent life. 

The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and is being met with an inundation of exhilaration after three decades of failure.  One reason the treatment is thought to have worked this time, is that doctors used a new type of snare to grab the clots.  It is a stent, which is basically a wire cage, on the end of a catheter that is inserted in the groin and threaded through an artery to the brain.

Each year, about 630,000 Americans have strokes caused by clots blocking blood vessels in the brain.  In almost half of these cases, the clot is a large vessel, which can have devastating consequences. 

See Gina Kolata, Breakthrough Helps Treat Worst of Strokes, The New York Times, Dec. 18, 2014.

Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.