Search Here

Three long-awaited studies have offered a poor outcome compared to what doctors anticipated after a new study revealed that mechanically removing a blood clot from a stroke patient's brain is no more useful than the older treatment of giving an IV dose of a clot-dissolving drug to the whole body.

The results of the clinical trials, presented this week at a meeting in Hawaii, shocked and surprised stroke physicians. Many had already adopted the more aggressive strategy, following recommendations, over the past decade.

"There wasn't really clear evidence that endovascular therapy added to tPA ... was better overall than tPA as the standard treatment," Dr. Joseph Broderick told MedPage Today. "It was hard to detect a signal of benefit in the studies that were presented."

Broderick, who led the largest of the three studies, was referring to disappointing results presented this week at the International Stroke Conference in Honolulu. He's research director of the neurological institute at the University of Cincinnati.

Practitioners hoped that "endovascular treatment," in which a catheter is threaded into a blocked artery and the clot is pulled out, would do for stroke patients what it has done for heart attack patients.

"We did this study with the strong expectation that we would find a positive benefit. We were surprised," said Joseph Broderick of the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, who headed one of the studies.

Several authors from the Broderick study disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, including companies that provided grants for the study. Concentric Medical provided catheters and devices used in the Kidwell study from initiation until August 2007.

Stroke is the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. About 800,000 people suffer a stroke each year, and about 130,000 die.