Stent device found successful in combating stroke

By Fred Tasker
McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — When a person’s heart arteries are clogged, it’s relatively routine to open them with a probe, then leave a sleeve-like mesh stent to hold the artery open. It’s a much newer technique to use stents to combat a stroke, which is caused by a blood clot blocking an artery in the brain.
After a trial with 19 patients at Baptist Cardiac & Vascular Institute in Miami, Dr. Italo Linfante presented a paper Monday that said using such a stent saved the lives of several patients who couldn’t be successfully treated by other methods.
When a vessel in the neck or head that supplies blood to the brain becomes blocked, doctors call it an ischemic stroke, which can result in significant disability or death. Usually, doctors fight the blockage with clot-busting drugs, or try to clean it out with a corkscrew-like device that breaks up the clot.
In the Baptist study, Infante chose 19 acute stroke patients who hadn’t been helped by drugs or corkscrew devices and used a stent to combat the blockage. The stent is a metallic mesh sleeve mounted on a tube. When it is pushed into the clot, it pokes a hole in it. Then the mesh is expanded, pushing the rest of the clot against the walls of the artery.
The restored blood flow dissolves the rest of the clot; the stent is sometimes then removed, or left in place to hold the artery open, Infante said. In his study, the stent opened the arteries of 18 of the 19 patients, who otherwise could have been disabled or died.
“Our findings suggest stents can work when clot-busting drugs and clot-removal devices do not, and are a safe and feasible option,” he said.
Infante is applying for approval from the Federal Drug Administration for human clinical trials of the device. Use in the general public is about five years away, he said.
“We’re behind Europe in this because the approval process is so slow,” he said.
Infante presented his study at the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy in Miami Beach on Monday. He is submitting it to peer-reviewed journals for publication.