Come again!
Posted on 02/05/2004 10:38:41 PM PST by neverdem
Test Shows Device Can Arrest Damage by Removing Blood Clots From Victims
An experimental device that works like a miniature corkscrew can halt often-devastating strokes by gently pulling blood clots from the brains of victims in the throes of an attack, researchers reported yesterday.
In the largest test of the new technique, doctors extracted blockages in dozens of patients around the country who otherwise would have probably died or suffered serious brain damage. In some cases, the procedure immediately restored their ability to move and talk, the researchers said.
Although the approach requires much more testing and perhaps refinement, a Food and Drug Administration panel will evaluate the device at the end of the month and could recommend that it be cleared to give doctors a powerful new tool to fight one of the nation's biggest killers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This may be very promising for the approximately 80% of strokes caused by blood clots.
It appears WaPo will make you re-register and re-confirm some demographic data. They already had my zip code and year of birth.
It sounds like a variation on the techique already used for coronary angiograms that describes blockages in one or more of the arteries of the heart. Those are performed under flouroscopic guidance, IIRC.
I would think it's a variation of intravascular surgery that can be applied to patients who have clots in a number of locations, not just the brain. There are intravascular ultrasound techniques. Many cardiologists and radiologists have been doing similar invasive work for a while. Vascular surgeons have been extracting arterial clots from extremities with minimally invasive procedures for quite a while.
Come again!
I hope you're doing well. It sounds like you were pretty sick to need that sort of diagnostic testing.
For the benefit of those following this thread, intravascular ultrasound usually means snaking a miniscule ultrasonic probe at the end of a catheter through the arteries up to the physical limit.
Then do a google search and read the whole article somewhere else. I searched for "pulling a cork out of a wine bottle Sidney Starkman" and found this article, complete with PICTURES!
Beyond Tissue Plasminogen Activator: Mechanical Intervention in ...
... single-wire gooseneck snare’s loop often pulling through the ... Concentric Balloon Guide Catheter lumen and out of the ... like a corkscrew removing a cork from a ...
138.5.102.101/emergency_medicine/pdf.docs/interventions%20for%20CVA.pdf
--------------------------
This was done from the outside manipulating a transducer on my chest. The machine also has a doppler system to measure the speed of blood flow. It's done and portrayed in real time. I watched my heart valve work. Then they switched to doppler to check for volume and speed of blood flow and look for any valve leakage. I could even see the shock wave within my heart as the valves closed and the return hit the heart valves. I saw what was the equivalent of a longitudinal cut section of my carotid arteries. A person can focus and magnify with this thing almost any way and place they want if they know how. It can also be used for obstetrics. It will detect aneurisms.
I took courses in ultrasonic inspection of materials and was once considered an authority on the subject. I could find incomplete mixing of alloys and nickle/chrome nodules 15 feet up a stainless steel propeller shaft. However, I'v never seen anything like this. With my background I could probably image gall stones and kidney stones with it. There is little doubt in my mind I could image bone fractures much as I found defects in weldments, but a lot more clearly.
In medicine, what you described is called an echocardiogram when it's over your heart, and a carotid doppler when looking at the main arteries in your neck. When looking for certain blood clots, in particular deep vein thromboses in the extremities, it's typically called a venous doppler. I imagine for the arteries it could be called an arterial doppler, but if you don't have distal pulses, then you have an emergency and need a vascular surgeon ASAP.
When your looking for stones in the gall bladder or kidneys it's called an ultrasound, but in obstetrics it's usually called a sonogram. It's the same technology and transducer, although when looking at flow phenomena they are able to take advantage of the doppler effect.
What I was trying to describe to you in the previous comment is that they have transducers maybe only 1 - 3 mm in diameter at the end of a very sophisticated instrument 3 - 4 feet long, which is then inserted into the femoral artery in a patient's groin and then manipulated into the iliac artey and up through the aorta into the coronary arteries to assess them for atherosclerotic disease.
That's what I meant by intravascular ultraound. It's still an investigational tool used in research AFAIK. I have only read about them in freebie professional literature.
When a cororany angiogram is needed they take a similar instrument, now called a catheter but without the tranducer and circuitry, to inject radiocontrast dyes into those arteries, as well as inject dye into the left ventricle to assess what's called the ejection fraction, which reflects how well the pump is functioning.
-----------------------
I am aware of it and I declined to go through it for numerous reasons. I am now on a swlf-prescribed medical regimin which has decreased my heart arrythmia and, surprisingly, has reduced a painful problem in the heel of my right foot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.