Word: tpa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There are risks. Recombinant pro-urokinase, like TPA, increases the chances of dangerous bleeding in the brain. And the treatment requires a doctor with great skill at threading a catheter into the brain...
...before you or a loved one is affected. Stroke occurs when part of the brain's blood supply gets cut off. Three years ago, researchers showed that physicians can, in many cases, prevent death or permanent disability from stroke if they give the victims a drug called TPA within three hours of the first symptoms. Last week investigators using another drug therapy proved that the treatment window can be stretched to six hours. Yet most emergency rooms aren't set up to treat a stroke that quickly. And most stroke patients wait an average of 13 hours before seeking medical...
When you evaluate a hospital's treatment of stroke, make sure it offers TPA. Find out what experimental trials, like the pro-urokinase study, it participates in. Does it enroll just two patients a month or 20 in these studies? How much experience do its doctors have threading catheters into the brain? Then, if stroke occurs, don't forget to act. Most stroke patients who got treated in time did so because they or someone nearby recognized the symptoms and got them to the hospital in a hurry...
Whereas traditional drug companies focus on developing chemical compounds, the biotech industry prefers to use biological ones--hormones, proteins and other substances that either already exist in the body or can be created from scratch. Examples include interferon, the clot buster tPA and the new breast-cancer drug Herceptin...
...Genentech backed the idea. At the time, European researchers had reported that the biotech company's clot-busting drug, TPA, worked no better, yet cost far more, than the standard clot buster. If TPA was to survive, it had to quantify its benefits to insurers. With a fortune on the line, Genentech turned to Califf. Within two years, Califf and the Cleveland Clinic organized a network that enrolled 41,000 patients. Conclusion: compared with the standard drug, TPA saved more than 2,000 lives a year...