Word: tpa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
Breakthrough is a term that is overused in reporting about medicine. But the latest advances in stroke treatment--of which TPA is only the most dramatic--surely qualify for that term. Because stroke kills 150,000 Americans each year and is a leading cause of permanent disability, even a moderately effective treatment would make a profound difference in the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people and their families...
...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 of Illinois...
Even if patients can't be given TPA, it's important for them to get to the hospital--and, if possible, to a specialized stroke-treatment center--as fast as they can. Neurologists have developed several other treatments to minimize stroke damage. For example, many patients become dehydrated, which slows down blood flow to the brain. By giving these patients intravenous liquids, doctors can correct the balance in the blood and prevent further damage...
...stroke victims who are treated quickly enough, however, TPA can literally give them back their life. Four weeks ago, Dr. Virendra Bisla, 49, was in a hospital outside Chicago, making rounds, when he suddenly found himself leaning against the wall. "The nurses kept asking me if I was all right," the cardiologist recalls. But even though Bisla could understand everything they said, he couldn't respond. They wheeled him to the emergency room, where doctors determined that he was suffering a stroke. Soon after, they transferred him to the specialized stroke center at the University of Illinois, where...