Removing blood clots from the brain, where they cause strokes,
is a delicate business. Researchers have now developed a new
treatment to dissolve clots, using surgery to apply new drug
close to the clot. Patients undergoing the new approach showed a
reduction in the size of the clot by over half. A new treatment
that treats a subset of stroke patients by combining minimally
invasive surgery, an imaging technique likened to “GPS for the
brain,” and the clot-busting drug t-PA appears to be safe and
effective, according to a multicenter clinical trial led by
Johns Hopkins researchers. The novel treatment, detailed for the
first time at this week’s European Stroke Conference in Hamburg,
Germany, was developed for patients with intracerebral
hemorrhage (ICH), a bleed in the brain that causes a clot to
form within brain tissue. This clot builds up pressure and
leaches inflammatory chemicals that can cause irreversible brain
damage, often leading to death or extreme disability. The usual
treatments for ICH—either ge