Mechanical treatment is a landmark for stroke victims
By Vincent Ryan
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A new mechanical treatment for stroke victims developed in Galway allows doctors to push a thread into a patients brain and, using a basket, remove a brain clot.
Eamon Brady, chief executive of Neuvari, the company behind the breakthrough, said the device was inserted into a patient after a doctor made an incision in the groin and threaded the "stent basket" device into the femoral artery.
The device is fed into the femoral artery, on to the aorta, and up to carotid artery which connects to the brain. Once the stent arrives at the brain it deploys a basket which captures the clot causing the stroke. It can remove the blockage, restoring the normal blood flow to the brain.
The device is one of the worlds first mechanical solutions to treat strokes. Until now doctors could only rely on a chemical treatment, thrombolysis, which has very limited usage.
"Drug trials for stroke treatments started 50 years ago," said Mr Brady.
"To date there have been about 900 trials and only one treatment approved thrombolysis which can only be used in a fifth of stroke patients. Stroke treatments have been a graveyard for drugmakers."
He said the developments in miniaturisation and imaging have given doctors the information needed to make critical decisions. Imaging now allows doctors to see which part of the brain have died and which are in danger of dying as a result of a blockage. Developments in miniaturisation have allowed the medical devices industry to develop mechanical solutions to illnesses that were once the preserve of the pharmaceutical industry.
Read more here:
Mechanical treatment is a landmark for stroke victims