The 60-year-old from Calgary was helping his wife get out of the groceries in 2015 when he dropped a box on the floor. “I bent down to pick it up with my left hand and nothing. “I could not pick it up,” Lavois told The Canadian Press. “I said, ‘My God. I’m having a stroke. ” Fortunately it did not affect my judgment and I went to my wife and said “call 911”. Lavois said he was one of the lucky ones. His blood clot cleared on its own until the ambulance arrived, but months of headaches and anxiety followed. He agreed to join a focus group at Foothills Medical Center hosted by the University of Calgary Cumming Medical School. It was part of a large study on the use of a standard heart medicine in patients with stroke. A study published Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet shows that Tenecteplase, commonly used as a thrombus for heart attacks, is also an effective treatment for acute ischemic stroke – when blood flow through a cerebral artery is blocked by a thrombus. The two-year study, which included the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center and the University of Toronto, included 1,600 patients in hospitals across Canada. It was the largest stroke clinical trial ever performed in the country. Dr. Bijoy Menon, a professor at the University of Calgary and a neurologist at Foothills Hospital, was the study’s co-lead researcher. He said the common cure was a drug called Alteplase, which is effective but more difficult to administer. He said it lasts up to an hour and requires an infusion pump to be monitored. This is not the case with heart medicine, which is simply injected and starts working almost immediately, Menon said. “The big advantage would actually be the speed with which it could be assigned. This could be assigned very easily and quickly to people in rural hospitals, to ambulances, to people and even to large hospitals; everything is done very quickly, so that is the great advantage of this new medicine. “The time you do makeup could really improve the results.” Menon said the findings could revolutionize stroke treatment and could also offer a less expensive option in middle- and lower-income countries. “Tenecteplase is known to be an effective drug that dissolves blood clots. “It’s very easy to manage, which makes it change the game when the seconds count to save the brain cells,” said Menon. “When you treat your patients faster, they tend to do better and save lives.” Lavois said that when he shared his opinion with the focus group, he said that the use of heart medicine in patients with stroke was a good idea. “When they said this was one injection and they could do it earlier than the other, I said, ‘Jess, don’t study. “Just do it,” he said with a laugh. “If I have another stroke, I know what to ask for.” Menon said the drug has already been proven to be safe and, with the results of the study, he expects it to be months, not years, before it is used on a regular basis. Carol Kenney, the clinical trial nurse coordinator, said the new drug would release nurses to provide additional treatment to patients once it was given. “We say time is brain, so the sooner we heal patients the better.” —Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press RELATED: VIDEO: The exoskeleton enables survivors of a stroke BC. to walk almost 2 kilometers a day RELATED: Stroke month aims to close gaps in medical care Heart & Stroke Health
