Mélanie Gomez / Photo credit: ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT / AFP
150,000 people suffer a stroke and 30,000 die each year. The Montpellier University Hospital team has just discovered that it is possible to save the most seriously affected patients, something unthinkable until now. The study has just been published in the very serious New England Journal of Medicine.
The brain that we thought was dead is not. This is the major discovery of this team. Until now, doctors offer perfusion treatment, that is to say the installation of a stand to unblock an artery in the brain. As for patients with small strokes. But these doctors decided to try to offer this treatment to much more severe patients. A bet that had very promising results
“These patients who were given up for death with an almost dead brain, there is one in five who will be able to return home. It was a surprise for everyone, for all of us, us the first in fact “, explains Professor Vincent Costalat, head of the neuroradiology department at Montpellier University Hospital.
“It will change everything”
This discovery should even change medical practices. “This is going to change everything in the global management of stroke treatment. These patients were left in the emergency room saying ‘we have nothing to do’ and now we are going to try treatment to improve their prognosis. It’s okay change everything”, confirms the co-author of the study and neurologist, Caroline Artisan.
On the other hand, be careful, these results do not change anything with regard to the urgency that stroke represents. When the brain is deprived of oxygen, two million neurons are lost every minute.