Healthcare professionals perform thrombectomy to remove blood clots from blood vessels. This surgery prevents organ damage as it restores blood flow. According to a recent study conducted by researchers from the Hôpital Gui de Chauliac and Montpellier in France, thrombectomy with medical care can help people with acute stroke and a large infarct get better recovery outcomes and reduce the risk of death.
This study was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In this study, researchers involved 333 patients with acute stroke. These participants had proximal cerebral vessel occlusion (blockages in the blood vessels of the brain) and a large infarct. Researchers divided these participants into two groups such as the thrombectomy group consisting of 166 patients who underwent endovascular thrombectomy and medical care and the control group consisting of 167 patients who received only medical care.
When researchers observed the collected data, they found that the risk of death for patients in the thrombectomy group was 36.1% and in the control group was 55.5%. This rate shows that thrombectomy with medical care reduced the risk of death as compared to medical care alone. Researchers also found that patients in the thrombectomy group were less disabled than patients in the control group after 90 days (about 3 months) as they had a median modified ranking scale score of 4 and 6 respectively.
Researchers also noticed that the risk of bleeding was higher in the patients of the thrombectomy group. They found almost 9.6% of people in the thrombectomy group had an intracerebral hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain). On the other hand, the risk of bleeding was very low in the control group as only 5.7% of patients had bleeding.
Even with this risk, the overall results of this study show that thrombectomy with medical care can effectively treat people with acute stroke and large infarcts. So, healthcare professionals should make some effective strategies to treat such people by using these findings.
Reference Link:
Vincent Costalat et al, Trial of Thrombectomy for Stroke with a Large Infarct of Unrestricted Size, New England Journal of Medicine (2024).
