Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, December 30, 2016

The pioneering stem cell procedure that can restore movement after a stroke

Nothing here gives me any sense of hope that stem cells work. They have NO fucking clue if the stem cells even survived and migrated to the correct locations. 

1. Nothing on the objective damage in the brain.  

2. No mention of even measuring if the stem cells survived

.

3. Nothing listed here proves cause and effect. 

4. No mention of measuring the blood vessels that were supposedly created

5. Nothing on what exercises were done to get these new cells to take on the needed functions. 

6. No mention if the new stem cells migrated to the correct place.

7. Did they objectively measure anything at all in this procedure?

 20 million cells is nothing, he likely lost hundreds of millions.

 I really do wonder if our researchers even know how to run research.
I could make just  as strong a case that the the real cause of the improvement was the trepanation.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4049358/ME-OPERATION-pioneering-stem-cell-procedure-restore-movement-stroke.html? 

THE PATIENT
One day in August last year I was reaching for food in the fridge, when I suddenly fell unconscious. I don’t know how long I was out for and I thought I had just tripped over.
Afterwards I felt a bit dizzy so I went for a lie down until my wife Catherine came home about an hour or two later.

I told her I fell and didn’t feel very well, but neither of us were particularly worried as all I had to show for my dizzy spell was a small scratch on my elbow. I had no idea that the fall was a stroke.
The next morning I made myself a cup of coffee, but when I tried to take a sip, it spilt as I couldn’t co-ordinate my hand to my mouth properly.
Catherine realised something wasn’t right so rang our daughter, Sonja, who took me to A&E. I swiftly deteriorated and by the time I got there an hour later, the left side of my mouth drooped and I couldn’t use my left arm. I wasn’t too concerned, but I wasn’t thinking clearly.
The doctors recognised instantly that I was having a stroke, and I was rushed in for a brain scan.
This showed that a blood clot was blocking blood flow to my brain and as a result various areas were permanently damaged, including the areas that govern movement and speech.
I was virtually paralysed down my left side, had no power in my left arm, and my speech was slurred.



The doctors said the fall was actually a stroke and as so much time had elapsed — about 24 hours between me having it and getting to hospital — there was little they could do.
I spent three days in hospital resting and slowly I started to realise just how much my life would have to change.
I spent 13 weeks in a rehabilitation centre having intense speech therapy and physiotherapy, but I just couldn’t regain any movement in my left arm or leg and my speech was still slurred. Things I’d taken for granted such as walking were now beyond me.
Back home I could no longer work and I had to rely on Catherine for most things — and had pretty much given up on ever regaining movement in my left side.
Then out of the blue in June, my neurologist rang to ask if I’d like to take part in a new trial for stem-cell therapy that would be the first ever treatment for damage caused by a stroke, I was immediately keen.
He explained that the treatment involved an injection of stem cells from a tissue bank and these would help regenerate the damaged brain areas and could restore movement. I was slightly worried about the idea of a needle going straight into my brain, but the doctors reassured me it was safe.

I went in for the two-hour surgery under general anaesthetic in September. Unsurprisingly, I don’t remember much about it, but I was well enough to go home the next day. Over the next few weeks I started physiotherapy and finally began to feel a change.
Before, I’d had no control over my left arm — it just dangled by my side with my fist clenched and it would sometimes shake uncontrollably — but now I can lift it above my chest. My friends have told me my speech is clearer, too. But my walking is still unsteady.
Before the treatment I had felt self-conscious, but the stem-cell therapy has given me a lifeline and I’m hopeful that I’ll get even better with more physio.
THE SPECIALIST
Professor Keith Muir is a consultant neurologist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.
Every year more than 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke and half of these are left with some kind of disability because blood supply to key areas is blocked.
Around 85 per cent of cases are ischaemic strokes, where the blood supply is stopped due to a clot. The others are known as haemorrhagic, where a weakened blood vessel supplying the brain bursts.
If the supply of blood is restricted or stopped, brain cells begin to die, resulting in permanent brain damage and disability as nerve cells don’t regrow.
Often if caught early, ischaemic strokes can be treated with medication to dissolve the blood clot and restore blood supply to the affected areas.
But these drugs have to be given within four hours of a stroke occurring in order to be effective as brain tissue doesn’t survive very long without a blood supply.


If this happens and the brain cells are killed off, there is little that doctors can do. Patients are left with irreversible disability as there are no treatments to help brain cells grow again. These patients are offered physiotherapy and rehabilitation, which can be of limited effectiveness.
But now scientists from Glasgow University and Reneuron, a biotechnology company based in Wales, are testing whether stem cells injected into the brain of patients after a stroke can stimulate regeneration of brain cells and blood vessels in order to restore some function.
These stem cells, called CTX, are derived from a brain tissue sample donated to a tissue bank in the U.S. and transported to the hospital.
Animal studies suggest that they can stimulate some of the brain’s natural repair systems and so recover some lost function.
Before the operation a ‘dose’ of around 20 million stem cells is unfrozen in the hospital pharmacy and drawn up into a syringe.
Under general anaesthetic a neurosurgeon drills a small hole about 1cm wide in the skull.
 We slowly inject a dose of 20 million CTX stem cells into the brain, which can take up to two hours, as the syringe is only gradually pushed down so that the cells drip into the brain precisely. Patients are usually ready to leave the hospital the next day.
 Prof Keith Muir
We use brain scans taken before the procedure to see where the damage is and guide the injection, aiming to place the stem cells in an intact area of brain close to where the stroke damage has occurred.
The cells can’t be injected into the damaged area since there’s no tissue there for them to hold on, and they would be washed away by the fluid circulating in the brain. However, animal studies show that when they are injected into nearby healthy brain tissue, the stem cells move to the site of damage.
We think that a chemical signal comes from damaged tissue that tells the cells to move there. As the cells move into the injured areas they are thought to release chemicals which stimulate the growth of nerve cells and new blood vessels.
We slowly inject a dose of 20 million CTX stem cells into the brain, which can take up to two hours, as the syringe is only gradually pushed down so that the cells drip into the brain precisely.
After the procedure, the hole in the skull is filled with a bone substitute material, similar to Polyfilla, and the scalp stitched.
Patients are usually ready to leave the hospital the next day.
A safety study published in the Lancet in June involving 11 stroke patients suggested there were no side-effects related to the cells over a two-year follow up.
Our current study at eight NHS centres has finished recruiting 21 patients, and so far results suggest significant improvement in patients’ disability scores.
We are awaiting full results from this study before we plan larger trials in more patients. 

WHAT ARE THE RISKS? 

- A small chance of infection.
- As with any brain surgery, bleeding in the brain is a possibility.
- Seizures are occasionally seen after injections to the brain (estimated in around 2 per cent of cases).
- There have not been any side-effects related to the injected cells so far but long-term follow-up has only been done in a few people.
Dr Steve Allder, a consultant neurologist in Plymouth, says: ‘I would be amazed, given what we are learning about the brain’s capacity to recover and how to use stem cells, if they didn’t help stroke patients improve paralysis.
‘There will be some false starts, but I’m confident stem cells will significantly help stroke patients.’
No mention of this risk.

Stem cell propagation fuels cancer risk in different organs 


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