Clinical Stroke Trials

Baptist Health Lexington: Success in Clinical Stroke Trials

Neurosurgeon CHRISTIAN RAMSEY, MD discusses how participating in clinical trials helps Baptist Health provide new technology and better treatment for patients who have suffered acute strokes.

Success in Clinical Stroke Trials Health Talks Transcript

Christian Ramsey, MD

I think where you go to get your care matters, and I think our hospital has done an exquisite job of engineering a system of care for stroke that has the potential to be world class. We’ve had an opportunity to be a part of some major groundbreaking clinical research in stroke in the last two years. There have been four major trials published regarding endovascular through-the-groin therapy to pull blood clots out of the brain. Our hospital was very supportive of that effort, and our hospital was also the fastest of many of these trials re-establishing blood flow to the brain. The SWIFT PRIME trial was a trial that we looked at the best medical management that would be TPA, in addition to clot-busting therapy through the groin with the use of the solitaire “stentriever” device. That trial was unlike other trials in that we based that therapy on blood profusion imaging that not a lot of centers can offer. You had to be wickedly fast in terms of how quickly we opened those blood vessels, and we were able to do that and show a massive benefit in patients who got the addition of the stentriever, which actually has resulted in, and potentially is going to be, an FDA indication for these new devices being used in acute stroke, in addition to best medical therapy.