When 44-year-old Kalavathi had a stroke she dropped her cup of tea, and fell to the ground, and her skin turned yellow. Her family did not know how to react. They rushed her to a tertiary healthcare centre, and the doctors performed a mechanical thrombectomy, which helped reverse a majority of symptoms of the stroke, improving her quality of life.
Mechanical thrombectomy is a new innovation in the field of stroke prevention and care. It is used in the treatment of ischemic strokes, or strokes where the blood supply to the brain is reduced because of a clot, according to K. Murali, Head, Department Endovascular Interventions, MIOT International.
“MIOT has now introduced this procedure to help patients,” he said. The process uses a stent, which is introduced into the blood vessel that has a clot, and the clot is trapped by a device called the stent retriever and then extracted. This restores blood flow immediately and revives dying brain cells, and reverses stroke damage, he said.
