Word: clots
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...year, Lee was suffering a stroke. Something had cut off the flow of oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to a portion of her brain. Sometimes the culprit is a leaky artery. But in Phillips' case, as in 80% of strokes, the problem, revealed by a CAT scan, was a clot that was plugging up one of the blood vessels in her head. Unless the clot was dislodged, part of her brain would die, leaving her at least partly paralyzed...
Because Phillips arrived at the emergency room so soon after her stroke began, the doctors offered her an experimental treatment. They injected her with a drug called TPA, which dissolved the clot and quickly re-established normal blood flow to her brain. Phillips recovered so completely, in fact, that it seemed as if the stroke had never happened. She left the hospital after four days, her speech normal and any trace of paralysis gone...
Half a million Americans suffer strokes each year. Four times out of five, the cause is a wayward clot that blocks an artery and robs the brain of oxygen-rich blood. Nerve cells start to die, depriving key parts of the body of the cerebral instructions they need to function. TPA can change all that by dissolving the clot and restoring blood flow before any damage is done to the brain. "It's the first bright sign that we've had that something we're doing actually works," says Dr. Cathy Helgason, a professor of neurology at the University...
...guidelines make clear, the key to successful treatment is two-fold. Doctors must first determine, by performing a cat scan, that the stroke is indeed being caused by a clot and not by a leaky artery. (In such cases, called hemorrhagic stroke, clotting is actually beneficial because it stops the loss of blood.) Then the physicians must ensure that less than three hours have elapsed since the stroke's onset. Otherwise the risk of bleeding into the brain is too great...
...medical breakthrough, a genetically engineered clot-dissolving drug, TPA, has been found to help prevent the irreversible brain damage that afflicts many stroke victims. Patients who received the drug were at least 30% more likely than untreated patients to suffer zero or minimal disability after three months. On the downside: TPA carries a small risk of brain hemorrhage and must be administered within three hours of the stroke...