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WASHINGTON - One minute Gary Formanek was hitting balls at an Oregon driving range. The next, he was lying on the ground, his left side paralyzed from a stroke.
The only drug that treats strokes didn't help. So doctors snaked a tiny corkscrew into Formanek's brain and pulled out the stroke-causing clot.
The device that saved Formanek from disability, if not death, is generating excitement among brain experts who say the novel technology might finally offer hope for the most devastating strokes.
Called the MERCI Retriever, it's still experimental. But in early testing, it seems to restore blood flow in almost half of patients - people who couldn't be helped by today's only stroke-busting medication.
"We know the limits of current stroke therapy," says Dr. Vance Watson of Georgetown University Hospital, who pulled pea-sized clots out of a woman near death from a massive stroke after childbirth. The woman still has some arm weakness but has largely recovered.
Dr. Sidney Starkman of the University of California at Los Angeles recalls the first patient ever treated. Five doctors jumped up and down and high-fived as a man completely paralyzed for six hours began speaking on the operating table.
"It still brings chills to me," Starkman says.
More than 700,000 Americans will suffer strokes this year. Strokes are the nation's No. 3 killer, and the top cause of disability.
Some strokes are caused by bleeding in the brain. But the majority are ischemic strokes, caused when arteries feeding the brain are blocked. Less than 5 percent of victims get clot-busting drug TPA because they don't get specialized care in time (within three hours of first symptoms) or the clot is too big.
Enter the Retriever, invented by UCLA scientists and licensed to Concentric Medical of Mountain View, Calif. They hope it will work as late as eight hours after a stroke, and pull out bigger clots. The main concern is puncturing an artery, considered a very rare risk.
Results of a study of 125 patients conducted at large stroke centers are due in February.