And yet these researchers totally failed to mention opening up capillaries closed due to pericytes. Complete failure. If you know these guys ask how they can miss something so obvious. Pericyte image here
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/252294.php
Two Rhode Island Hospital researchers recently found that restoring
near-complete blood flow to the brain is necessary to restore or
preserve neurological function following stroke. Seems like a no-brainer, right?
Yet until their research was complete, many physicians and researchers
believed that partial blood-flow restoration was good enough. Not
anymore.
The study by Mahesh Jayaraman, M.D., director of interventional
neuroradiology, and Brian Silver, M.D., director of the Comprehensive
Stroke Center at Rhode Island Hospital, is published online in advance
of print in the American Journal of Neuroradiology.
The researchers found that when performing intra-arterial stroke therapy
- putting a catheter directly into a blood vessel in the brain in an
effort to open it - it's simply not enough to open some of the vessels.
Rather, opening the vast majority of the vessels is needed to truly
restore neurological function in patients with acute ischemic stroke who
are ineligible for, or fail to improve following intravenous tissue
plasminogen activator (tPA), a common treatment for stroke.
"Stroke caused by a large blockage in the brain is potentially
debilitating," Jayaraman said. "But if we can successfully restore blood
flow to the majority of the blood vessels in the brain, then we may be
able to help reduce the severity of a patient's stroke. While previous
studies have shown that any restoration of blood flow can help, our
results are the first to show that near-complete restoration is needed
to help improve patient outcomes, including the preservation of fine and
gross motor skills, speech and behavior."
The purpose of the study was to determine whether the degree of
restoration of blood flow to the brain has an impact on the degree of
brain damage and clinical outcomes. The study found that there are, in
fact, significant differences in clinical outcomes between partial and
near-complete blood flow restoration following intra-arterial stroke
therapy for strokes that occur in the front part of the brain. As a
result, Jayaraman and Silver concluded that future patient care plans
should focus on restoring as much blood flow as possible, combining new
technologies with a health care infrastructure designed to deliver rapid
care.
"Rapid treatment is critical for stroke patients," Silver said. "It's
not enough to just open blood vessels to the brain; it has to be done as
early as possible. At Rhode Island Hospital, more than 50 percent of
our patients are treated with intravenous clot busters (tPA) in less
than 60 minutes after arrival, and a significant number of stroke
patients are being treated with an intra-arterial therapy in less than
two hours from the time they arrive. Stroke treatment needs to evolve,
and that includes using new technologies that allow physicians to remove
the clot in its entirety as quickly as possible."
Stroke is a leading cause of death in the United States; more than
800,000 people in the U.S. die each year from cardiovascular disease and
strokes. Sometimes called a "brain attack," stroke occurs when a clot
blocks the blood supply to the brain or when a blood vessel in the brain
bursts. If not treated in a timely manner, stroke can cause death or
significant disability, such as paralysis, speech difficulties and
emotional problems.
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