Until the CLEAR trials, which began in 2000, most physicians thought that the drug was unsafe for hemorrhagic stroke patients because it can cause bleeding in the brain. Much of the earliest research on tPA was performed at Johns Hopkins by Myron Weisfeldt, M.D., former director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine. The drug, tPA, or tissue plasminogen activator, is a synthesized version of a natural protein found on cells that line blood vessels, and has been used to treat heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots since the late 1990s.

hospitals die, and only 20 percent of patients return home to live independently. Overall, an estimated 50 percent of the 120,000 annual hemorrhagic stroke patients admitted annually to U.S. “Our results suggest that physicians should begin to think about routinely using it for stable hemorrhagic stroke patients.”Ĭurrently, there are no other direct treatments considered approved or safe for hemorrhagic stroke, and the standard of care is supportive, including blood pressure control, ventilator-assisted breathing and drugs to control brain swelling. “We found that using the clot-busting drug tPA meant that for every 10 patients treated, one life was saved,” says Daniel Hanley Jr., M.D., the Jeffrey and Harriet Legum Professor of Acute Care Neurological Medicine and director of the Brain Injury Outcomes Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Researchers are expected to present results and details of the study, known as the Clot Lysis: Evaluating Accelerated Resolution of Intraventricular Hemorrhage III (CLEAR III) trial, at the International Stroke Conference on Feb. Almost 50 percent of patients were home and living independently at 180 days. Reporting on the results of a phase III international clinical trial, Johns Hopkins Medicine physicians say use of a cardiac clot-busting drug to treat strokes that cause brain bleeding safely decreased the death rate in patients by 10 percent, compared to a control group receiving saline.ĭuring the five and a half years of the study, the researchers say they also found that “flushing” the unwanted blood from the brain with either the drug or saline (salt) solution was associated with better outcomes for many. “Flushing” blood with clot buster drug improves stroke recovery.

Brain bleed treatment decreases death rate by 10%.

Clot buster