Clot-catching brain stents hailed as a lifesaving breakthrough for stroke patients

Stroke experts are reporting a major advance: Stents similar to the ones used to open clogged heart arteries also can be used to clear a blood clot in the brain, greatly lowering the risk a patient will end up disabled.

Patients treated with these brain stents were far more likely to be alive and able to live independently three months after their stroke, doctors said Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference in Nashville. The treatment was so successful that three studies testing it were stopped early, so it could be offered to more patients. One study also found the death rate was cut almost in half for those given the treatment.

“This is a once-in-a-generation advance in stroke care,” said the head of one study, Dr Jeffrey Saver, stroke chief at the University of California, Los Angeles.

An independent expert, Dr Lee Schwamm of Massachusetts General Hospital, called it “a real turning point in the field.” For many patients, “this is the difference between returning home and not returning home,” although only certain types of patients can be offered it, he said.

Stroke care “needs to be completely changed” to make the treatment more widely available, said Dr Walter Koroshetz, acting director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

“This has taken stroke therapy to the same place that heart attack therapy is now,” he said.

Most strokes are caused by a blood clot lodged in the brain. The usual treatment is clot-dissolving medicine called tPA. When that doesn’t work, doctors sometimes try devices pushed through blood vessels to pluck out the clot, but several studies found they didn’t help.