Word: tpa
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...patient fares after a stroke depends on several factors, including how much of the brain has been affected; how soon and what sort of treatment is started (clot busters like TPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, should be administered within three hours for ischemic strokes but not for hemorrhagic strokes, lest they cause even more bleeding); how severe the symptoms are (paralysis is worse than simple weakness); and the patient's general health before the brain injury...
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...