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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 Partial and minimal clot removal occurred in 11 percent and four percent of patients, respectively.
Forty-three percent of patients needed just a single treatment session to experience a benefit. Ultrasound exams conducted six months later showed that 78 percent of the affected veins remained clear of DVT. At 12 months, that figure rose to 83 percent.
In terms of PST, surveys up to one year after treatment revealed that just under 70 percent of the patients said they had no leg pain or swelling, and nearly 80 percent said they experienced no heat or burning discomfort in the affected limb.
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Garcia and his colleagues conclude that the new technique is useful in treating the largest and most difficult clots safely and quickly, representing a significant advancement in DVT therapy.
"Clearly, the medical standard of care doesn't nearly work well enough," said Garcia. "It's not adequate. If you have a clot, and you can't get rid of it, there's the constant threat of pulmonary embolism and death -- 200,000 deaths every year. And, while we don't really know what percentage of patients go on to post-thrombotic syndrome, if you have a non-dissolved clot, you have a real chance of going on to develop life-changing and life-threatening issues over time."
"So, while I'm not saying everyone who has a clot needs to get this new treatment, patients have to know they can't just sit back," Garcia stressed. "Their clot needs to be closely followed. And, if it's dissolving, wonderful. If not, they should be very aggressive in getting help to dissolve these clots -- within two weeks from symptoms, ideally -- and this technique can really help."
Dr. Samuel Goldhaber, director of the venous thromboembolism research group at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, took a more conservative view.
"This treatment would address only a small niche of patients," said Goldhaber, who is also a professor of medicine at Harvard University School of Medicine. "It could help those who need more than an anticoagulant but who have had recent surgery or have a preexisting bleeding risk of some kind, and so are not eligible for traditional clot-busting therapy."
"This type of catheter -- one that basically sucks up the clot -- is one of several more aggressive options for treating DVT now under development," Goldhaber added. "The example they looked at seems promising, and hopefully this will lead to larger trials that will test these catheters more thoroughly."
More information
For additional information on DVT, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
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