ADVANCE/Life-Saving Clot-Dissolving Drug Used by Less Than 10% of Eligible Stroke Patients; 'This is Nothing Short of Medical Tragedy'.

Medical & Lifestyle Editors

ADVANCE...for Release 6:00 PM March 6

(ADVANCE) PLEASANTVILLE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2000

A clot-dissolving drug (t-PA) that might benefit 35 to 45 percent of people who have had an ischemic stroke, is being used on only two to three percent three years after the drug's FDA approval, asserts Mark J. Alberts, M.D. of Duke University Medical Center.

"A number of neurologists consider this nothing short of a medical tragedy," states the current (March) issue of New Choices: Living Even Better After 50. "Each failure to administer t-PA to someone eligible for it represents a loss of brain, a loss of capacity, and maybe the loss of life," says Pete Todd, president of the National Stroke Association.

Treatment with t-PA has to be administered within three hours of the onset of stroke symptoms, notes the article. Beyond three hours, positive results declined and were overwhelmingly counterbalanced by serious bleeding in the brain. The drug, cautions the article, is not for everyone who has a stroke. It's inappropriate for those with hemorrhagic stroke (diagnosed by a CT scan) or uncontrolled high blood pressure. People who have had a recent heart attack or gastrointestinal or urinary bleeding should not receive the drug; nor should anyone who uses anticoagulants or has had major surgery within two weeks of having a stroke.

(End of advance for release 6:00 p.m. March 6.)