When someone suffers a stroke, time is of the essence in preventing disability, or death.

In addition to the standard clot-busting drugs, Kansas University Hospital has been attacking strokes with catheters to vacuum or snare out clots in the brain for a decade. A new medical journal article confirming the practice as effective in treating serious strokes came as no surprise but was still exciting news to KU doctors.

Marilyn Rymer, vice president of neurosciences at KU Hospital, said doctors there have been using embolectomy devices successfully since 2004.

“But we’ve really never had data to validate the fact that this was a much better way of doing things than just the intravenous clot-buster drug,” she said. “Doctors and patients and everyone wants to know that this is evidence-based medicine, that we’re doing it based on science.”

For large-vessel occlusions, or blockages, Rymer said KU doctors knew they had a much better chance of the patient walking out of the hospital and going back to his or her life if catheters were used rather than IV clot-buster drugs alone.

The article published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine provided evidence to back that up.

A research trial using the acronym MR CLEAN indicated that physically removing large clots blocking blood vessels to the brain was decidedly more effective in producing positive patient outcomes than the current standard of care, which is an IV-infusion of clot-busting drugs, according to KU Hospital.

“The need for a treatment for patients who do not have a good response to intravenous treatment alone remains pressing,” doctor Werner Hacke wrote in an editorial accompanying the journal study, noting that the drug’s time window is limited and certain clots respond poorly to it.

Clot-buster drugs must be used within three or four hours after the onset of symptoms, Rymer said. She said the study validated that the catheter device can be effective up to six hours after the onset.

The study showed that even stroke patients over 80 can benefit from the catheter, Rymer said. That’s particularly encouraging because doctors have always been concerned about using clot-buster drugs with those older patients.

Stroke is cited as the third leading cause of death worldwide, and the leading cause of death for women, Rymer said.

It’s also a leading cause of adult disability, if blood flow to the brain is cut off for too long, making strokes extra important to treat quickly and effectively.

“We’re not just talking about mortality,” Rymer said. “We’re talking about not being able to walk, or not being able to talk.”