Andre Lavoie knew almost immediately that he was suffering a stroke.
The 60-year-old Calgary man was helping his wife store groceries in 2015 when he dropped a can on the floor.
“I leaned over to grab him with my left arm and … nothing. I couldn’t pick it up,” Lavoie said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“I said ‘Oh my God. I have a stroke. Luckily, it didn’t affect my judgment and I went to my wife and said’ call 911 ‘.”
Lavoie said he is one of the lucky ones. Her blood clot cleared on its own when the ambulance arrived, but months of headaches and a feeling of discomfort followed.
He agreed to be part of a focus group at Foothills Medical Center led by the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. It was part of a large study on the use of established cardiac medication in stroke patients.
Research published Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet shows that tenecteplase, commonly used as a clot killer for heart attacks, is also an effective treatment for acute ischemic stroke, when blood flow through of a cerebral artery is blocked by a clot.
The two-year study, which included the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center and the University of Toronto, included 1,600 patients in hospitals across Canada. It was the largest stroke clinical trial ever conducted in the country.
Dr. Bijoy Menon, a professor at the University of Calgary and a neurologist at Foothills Hospital, was the study’s lead co-researcher. He said the common treatment has been a drug called Alteplase, which is effective but harder to administer.
He said it takes up to an hour and requires an infusion pump to be controlled.
That’s not the case with the heart drug, which simply injects itself and starts working almost immediately, Menon said.
“The big advantage would be, in fact, the speed with which this could be delegated. This could be delegated very easily and quickly to people in rural hospitals, in ambulances, even in large hospitals … everything is done very fast, so this is the great advantage of this new drug.
“The time you recover could really improve the results.”
Menon said the findings could revolutionize stroke treatment and could also offer a less expensive option to middle- and low-income countries.
“Tenecteplase is known to be an effective drug for dissolving clots. It’s very easy to administer, which makes it a game changer when the seconds count to save brain cells,” Menon said.
“When you treat your patients faster, they tend to do better and save lives.”
Lavoie said that when he shared his contribution to the focus group, he said the use of the heart drug in stroke patients was a good idea.
“When they said this is an injection and they can do it before the other, I said,‘ Don’t do a study. Just do it, ”he said with a laugh.
“If I have another stroke, I know what to ask for.”
Menon said the drug has already been shown to be safe and, with the results of the study, he hopes it can take months instead of years before it can be used on a regular basis.
Carol Kenney, the clinical trial nurse coordinator, said the new drug would release nurses to offer additional treatment to patients once administered.
“We say time is brain, so the faster we treat patients, the better.”
—Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press
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HealthHeart and stroke