Author: Roberta Yared

A new device could save you and yours from major disabilities caused by the most common type of stroke.

The tiny device has a big name: The Concentric MERCI Retrieval System. It “almost instantly” reverses paralysis and other stroke symptoms by safely removing blood clots from the brain vessels, Sidney Starkman, M.D., of the UCLA Stroke Center, told an American Stroke Association conference in San Diego last month.

Each year, 700,000 Americans have a stroke, the country’s leading cause of disabliity and the third-leading cause of death. Eighty-eight percent of strokes are ischemic, in which blood flow to the brain is blocked.

Starkman reported that in his study, blood flow was restored in more than 50 percent of the 114 participants, whose average age was 70 and who were treated up to eight hours after their stroke symptoms first appeared. Many of these patients had no problems or only minor difficulties after the blood clots were removed, he said.

Trial participants could not use the clot-buster drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), the standard treatment today. TPA must be given within three hours of the onset of stroke symptoms.

The new device, made of nickel and titanium and shaped like a corkscrew, is encased in a catheter and threaded through an artery in the groin up to the brain.

The MERCI Retriever has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but is under review.

Article taken from AARP Bulletin- March 2004

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For updated information on the Concentric MERCI Retrieval System, click on Concentric-medical.com .