thrombectomy

A thrombectomy removes a blood clot from inside a blocked artery. In stroke care, a specialist threads a long, flexible tube called a catheter into an artery in the upper thigh and guides it up to the blocked artery in the neck or brain. A device called a stent retriever, a small wire mesh carried inside the catheter, traps the clot, and the retriever and the clot are then pulled back out through the tube, letting blood reach the brain again.

It treats ischaemic strokes, the kind caused by a blockage, and it is the standard treatment when the clot sits in one of the brain's large arteries, where restoring blood flow can rescue brain tissue that has not yet been lost and limit long term disability. It needs specialist teams and equipment. In England, for example, most stroke patients first arrive at a local hospital that can give clot-dissolving medicine but cannot perform a thrombectomy, so those who need one have to be identified quickly and transferred to a specialist centre.