Doctors have developed a new treatment for stroke victims who do not receive first-line treatment: a tiny vacuum cleaner for blood vessels.
[F]ewer than 5 percent of stroke sufferers get TPA, because they don’t get specialized care in time. And of those treated, it only helps about 30 percent, because the clot is often too big or tough for TPA to bust.
Enter Penumbra, an option for patients who miss out on early care — it can be tried up to eight hours after a stroke strikes — or if standard TPA treatment fails.
Specialists thread a tiny tube inside a blood vessel at the groin and push it up the body and into the brain until it reaches the clog. Just like a vacuum cleaner, it sucks up the clot bit by bit to restore blood flow.
For the right patient, Penumbra can produce dramatic help, says Dr. Demetrius Lopes of Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center, one of two dozen hospitals that tested the device in 125 severe stroke patients.
This treatment sounds extremely promising, and hopefully it will help save many lives which would otherwise either be lost, or irrevocably altered.
