Physician Takes Part in Groundbreaking Stroke Study

 “Stroke is a devastating disease. . . . After a career of caring for patients and trying many different ways to devise advances, it’s humbling and gratifying to have a therapy that can make a difference,” Saver said.

For decades, the only way to effectively treat an acute ischemic stroke, where there’s blockage in a brain vessel that restricts blood flow, was to use a drug known as a tissue plasminogen activator within the first three hours of the event to break up the clot. The new treatment still uses tPA but also involves a mechanical stent retriever that completely removes the clot.

After administering tPA, a catheter is sent to a stroke patient’s brain after being inserted through the femoral artery in the leg. The catheter contains the retrieval device that extracts the clot from the blocked vessel, restoring blood flow to the brain.

The procedure to extract the clot could last from an one to two hours, depending on factors such as preparation time and how easy it is to retrieve the clot.

Saver served as principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s FAST-MAG trial. The study showed that 60 percent of patients treated with the device in conjunction with the drug saw an improved recovery, while 35 percent saw an improvement with only the tPA.

The results were so strongly in favor of the combined treatment the study was halted early in February 2015 so patients could be treated accordingly.

“I’ve been doing clinical trials all my professional years. . . . It’s very rare to have a study stopped early because of the overwhelming benefit,” Saver said. “It’s what every clinical trialist dreams of happening.”

Due to the results of the study, the American Heart Association issued new guidelines for 2015. The American Stroke Association has also endorsed the procedure.

At Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, the new treatment has been in use for over a year. Dr. Lorne Label, a neurologist at the hospital, said he’s seen positive results, but he stressed that, like all medical procedures, it does not have a 100 percent success rate.

“We’ve seen some miraculous improvements where blood flow reestablished itself and brain function is quite good,” he said. “And then we’ve seen everywhere in between where it didn’t or it only partially worked.”

For Saver’s part, the study represents the culmination of a lifetime of work in the study of neurology.

“It’s a tribute to all of the work and trials that have happened before,” he said.

A senior associate vice chair of neurology at UCLA, Saver trained at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard-Longwood Neurology Training Program, the University of Iowa and Brown University.

He is author of over 470 research articles, two books and 35 book chapters.

Saver also served as chair of the American Heart Association Stroke Council. He is now associate editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association and is a consulting editor at the journal Stroke.

To read the original article fro Thousand Oaks Acorn click here: http://www.toacorn.com/news/2015-10-29/Health_(and)_Wellness/Local_MD_takes_part_in_groundbreaking_stroke_study.html