`BRAIN DEAD' MAN RECOVERING WITH NEW DRUG THERAPY.

Byline: Ed Susman Medical Tribune News Service

A man who Oregon University doctors believed was clinically brain dead from a stroke is now back operating a tractor and running a farm.

Researchers used an experimental treatment to dissolve a blood clot in the basilar artery, which feeds the brain stem.

Reporting Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Dr. Wayne Clark said that after trying the therapy, he still thought he would be talking to the family of the 41-year-old Latino farmer about organ donation.

``Instead I was talking to them about rehabilitation,'' said Clark, director of the Oregon Stroke Center in Portland.

Within 24 hours, the man was conscious, alert and moving all his limbs, Clark said. After three months, he was walking and living at home.

``He has trouble seeing to one side and he walks with a cane, but he's a rancher, and he's back doing what ranchers do,'' eight months after the drug urokinase was administered to dissolve the clot and restore healthy blood flow to the brain, Clark said.

Dr. Steven Ringel, a professor of neurology at the University of Colorado Health Science Center in Denver, and president of the AAN, applauded Clark's success but said many neurologists would dispute Clark's description that the patient was actually ``brain dead.''

Ringel said brain dead implies the man could not breathe on his own, but in this case, the patient was able to do that when treatment was tried.

Clark said: ``He failed every test of brain death we gave him, but we didn't administer all the tests.'' Clark said he saw no eye movement after stimulation with intense light, and no response to cold water or pain.