READER’S DIGEST
Today, more than two-and-a-half years after
her stroke, and after much hard work in
rehabilitation, Florence is enjoying paintingthe neurons fed by the blocked artery
are not salvageable because too much
time has passed, the bleeding risk is
too great related to potential benefit.
Even when administered imme-
diately, thrombolysis by itself isn’t
always 100 per cent effective. “When
people have blood clots in the big-
ger arteries of the brain, closer to
the main trunk, tPA most of the time
doesn’t work as well,” says professor of
neurology, Dr Raul Nogueira. Florence
was fortunate. She woke up after the
procedure still unable to speak, but
tPA had stopped the stroke from fur-
ther damaging her brain.
TIME IS CRITICAL
Environmental engineer Jan Heus-
sen, now 45, remembers
the morning in late April
2016 starting out much like
any other. At about 7am he
went downstairs to prepare
the family’s breakfast. He
felt fine right up to the mo-
ment he collapsed while
feeding Fellow, his golden
retriever.
His wife, hearing a
thud, raced downstairs
and called an ambulance.
Hospital emergency staff
determined Jan had suf-
fered an ischaemic stroke
and immediately per-
formed thrombolysis.
But the tPA did not dis-
solve the blood clot as
hoped. As precious minutes ticked by,
Jan was rushed to a larger hospital that
was equipped to perform a newer pro-
cedure called thrombectomy, whereby
surgeons thread a tiny stent or suction
device through a tube into the blocked
artery. Once it arrives at the clot, it can
either grab it and pull it out or suction
it away.
It had now been three hours since
Jan Heussen’s stroke. Surgeons first
took scans of his brain to help them
target the exact location of the clot,
then threaded a thrombectomy de-
vice through an artery to clear it, and
by doing so probably saved his life.
Until very recently, experts believed
that the time window for performing a
thrombectomy was almost as narrow