In a recent clinical trial, researchers have discovered that a clot-busting drug used for non-bleeding strokes and heart attacks can be consumed to decrease post-stroke disability and mortality in patients suffering from a kind of bleeding stroke.

Researchers have reported at the 2016 International Stroke Conference that the drug Alteplase, a tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, can empty the blood that was in excess in the brains of intraventricular hemorrhage patients, cutting death rates by 10% and roughly doubled the probability of a more functional recovery.

Intraventricular hemorrhage is a kind of stroke that leads into blood pooling and clotting in the ventricles of the brain, which generally carry cerebrospinal fluid. Intraventricular hemorrhage is responsible for only 15% of all strokes, but causes 40% of stroke deaths.

Intraventricular hemorrhage isn’t survived by 60% to 80% patients, and 90% of the ones who manage to stay alive recover quite little of their former functionality.

In a press release, Dr. Issam Awad, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, said, “For many patients, this approach can significantly reduce disability after a stroke, and can be the difference between going home instead of going to a nursing home”.

To conduct the study, researchers enrolled 500 patients worldwide with intraventricular hemorrhage, and carried out their treatment using either tPA or saline via a brain catheter. After the treatment, the researchers followed the participants for five years, from 2009 to 2015.

They found that death rates in patients who received tPA dropped by 10%, and were one-third lower in comparison to the death rate of the saline group.

The researchers reported that 18% more patients with bigger clots, above 20 mL of pooled blood, who received tPA showed ‘good outcomes’ as compared to the ones who got saline, and 79.8% patients provided with tPA had 80% clot removal. They said that the patients with 90% of their clots removed had over 50% chance of ‘good’ outcome.