Clot-buster Treatment Raises Hope For Stroke Patients

An alternative treatment for strokes, mechanical thrombectomy, which can bring patients ‘back to life’ on the operating table is now available. The revolutionary technique, which is already used across the United Kingdom, UK works for more people and is far more effective than Orthodox.  The procedure involves carefully removing the devastating blood clots which cause strokes from deep within the brain using a three-foot long wire.

Until now, doctors have mainly used drugs to dissolve the blood clots – but the chemicals can have severe side effects, and do not work at all in about 15 per cent of patients with the most severe strokes.

A stroke is when poor blood flow to the brain results in cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding.

They result in part of the brain not functioning properly. Patients treated with the new procedure have an 80 to 90 per cent chance of success, compared with 30 per cent using clot-busting drugs.

A study published in the ‘Lancet’ last year showed 50 per cent of people treated this way had shown neurological recovery within 24 hours, compared to just 21 per cent treated with clotbusting drugs. The treatment has until now been given to only 600 patients a year at a handful of hospitals across England.

However, Chief Executive of the NHS England, Simon Stevens, announced its use would be expanded to 24 hospitals.

Doctors at St George’s Hospital in South London, which has been trialling the technique since 2010, have reported patients who were completely paralysed by a stroke entirely recovered as soon as they received the treatment. Dr. Joe Leyon, an interventional neuroradiologist at St George’s, said last year: “It’s fair to say they have been brought back to life when they get these functions back in a moment.’

Crucially, it has to be used within six hours of the stroke to be effective, and until now, St George’s has been the only hospital to offer the treatment 24/7. Mr Stevens said the new services are to be phased in later this year, with an additional 1,000 patients set to benefit in the first year. Health Education England will also start training more highly-skilled interventional radiologists to carry out the technique, the report stated.

The technique involves a wire stent, which is a small mesh tube. It is fed through an artery in the groin up to the brain, where it grabs the clot and removes it entirely.

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