Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Strokes are one of the leading causes of death and disease in the world. They occur due to blockages of blood vessels in the brain. These blockages are similar to a bathtub drain being clogged with debris. In this analogy, the bathtub drain would be the blood vessel, and the debris would be the blood clot. For a long time doctors used a clot-buster medication to help patients having a stroke, which is like using a liquid drain cleaner to unclog a drain. More recently, researchers have found that removing the blood clot from within the blood vessel works better than using clot-buster medication, and doctors now use a tool similar to a plumbers snake to remove the blood clot. An important step is checking if the blood clot is removed after the procedure, and making sure the blood vessel is open. This is done by injecting dye into the blood stream and taking pictures. Our research team recently started using a new device called optical coherence tomography in stroke patients. This device is just like a good camera that can take pictures from inside the blood vessel. What we found was very interesting. In three patients there was left-over blood clot even though the pictures with dye showed that the blood clot was completely gone. It was very eye-opening that what we once thought about complete blood clot removal may not actually be true. Just like many new scientific findings, the application of a new technology is what made this possible. Although naturally we would think that this left-over blood clot causes new/worse strokes, we don't know this for sure. Therefore, we propose a study at our regional stroke center to characterize the findings using our new device in a larger group of patients. Our objectives are to make sure that using this device is practical, safe, and compare patients with left-over blood to those without left-over blood clot.