For all of the advancement in treating stroke victims over the past couple of decades, some concerns have remained almost constant. In medicine, we like to say that “time is brain,” meaning that every moment a stroke goes untreated, the potential for long-term brain damage or death escalates. In fact, every minute that the brain goes without blood flow, the average patient loses around 1.9 million neurons and about a week of independent life, experts say.
As the vast majority of strokes are ischemic, with a blood clot blocking the flow of oxygen to the brain, clearing that clot swiftly is critical. This is true whether the clot is small or large and regardless of its density—but reliably removing the densest clots via mechanical means has proved an elusive task.
