Cool medical technology - corkscrew (a very tiny one)
From
New Scientist magazine comes the report of an advance in stroke treatment.
They go in and yank the clot out with a corkscrew.
bq. "In our trial we had patients completely paralysed on one side of their body who returned to normal almost immediately after the clot was retrieved," says Sidney Starkman, of the Stroke Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. "How often do you get a chance to reverse a patient's stroke on the operating table?"
bq. Starkman's team are evaluating the new device, which is made by California-based company Concentric Medical, and it has been tested on 114 patients so far. Blood flow was restored to the affected parts of the brain in 61 patients. Of these, 23 ended up with either no disability or with only relatively minor problems, such as difficulty writing.
Very clever stuff - simple idea but effective...
Posted by DaveH at February 5, 2004 10:33 AM