“It really is an important finding that I share with my colleagues from coast to coast. “Through this collaboration, these findings could revolutionize the treatment of stroke around the world.” Bijoy Menon, MD, professor at the University of Calgary, neurologist at Foothills Medical Center and co-lead researcher in the study. “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 counting the seconds to save brain cells.” According to current guidelines, Alteplase (tPA) is the recommended drug for patients with acute ischemic stroke. The challenge is that the drug is more complicated to administer. It lasts up to an hour and requires an infusion pump to be monitored. The pump can be cumbersome when transporting a patient to a hospital or stroke center for treatment. “One of the reasons Tenecteplase is so effective is that it can be given as a single immediate dose,” says Dr. Rick Swartz, MD, PhD, clinical researcher at the University of Toronto, co-principal investigator and neurologist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center. “This is a great advantage, saving critical time and complications. TNK could potentially be given wherever the patient first appears, in a medical center or small hospital. The ActT assay compared TNK with tPA in a randomized assay. The results published in The Lancet show that TNK worked just as well, if not better than the currently recommended drug, tPA. TNK adheres to the clot for a longer period of time than tPA, which means that blood flow is restored faster and for a longer period of time. Along with discovering a better way to treat acute ischemic stroke, the team also established a more cost-effective and cost-effective way to conduct clinical trials. Report: Menon BK, Buck BH, Singh N, et al. Intravenous tenecteplase versus alteplase for acute ischemic stroke in Canada (AcT): a pragmatic, polycentric, open-label, registry-linked, randomized, controlled, non-inferiority test. The Lancet. 2022, 0 (0). doi: 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (22) 01054-6 This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: the material may have been edited for length and content. For more information, contact the cited source.
