Active clinical trials for "Stroke"

Stroke is the 5th leading cause of death and the leading cause of adult disability in the United States (US). Stroke is a complex disease with multiple interacting risk factors (including genetic, high blood pressure and cholesterol, and lifestyle factors like smoking, diet, and exercise) that lead to initial and recurrent stroke. Up to 90% of stroke survivors have some functional deficit that impacts both physical and mental health. Scientific evidence that identifies the best stroke care delivery design is lacking. We completed a three-year, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Health Care Innovation Award that tested a new stroke care design called an Integrated Practice Unit (IPU). This IPU was developed through stakeholder input from patients, caregivers, nurses, stroke specialists, rehabilitation specialists, patient advocacy groups, payers, and technology companies. This IPU design was associated with decreased hospital length of stay, readmissions, and stroke recurrence, as well as lower cost. Based on the CMS study, a larger, pragmatic trial was developed that is called C3FIT (Coordinated, Collaborative, Comprehensive, Family-based, Integrated, and Technology-enabled Stroke Care). C3FIT will randomly assign 18 US hospital sites to continue Joint Commission-certified Comprehensive/Primary (CSC/PSC) design or to the novel Integrated Stroke Practice Unit (ISPU) design for stroke care. C3FIT's ISPU uses team-based, enhanced collaboration (called Stroke Central) and follows patients from presentation at the Emergency Department (ED) through 12-months post-discharge (called Stroke Mobile). Stroke Mobile includes a nurse and lay health educator team who visit patients and caregivers at home or at a rehabilitation or skilled nursing facility to assess function and quality of life using telehealth technology to facilitate access to multiple providers. Results from C3FIT will provide high quality scientific evidence to determine the best stroke care design that ensures positive health for patients and caregivers.

This study proposes to use transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a technique by which a very small electrical current (2 mA) is applied to the scalp, along side speech therapy in patients with subacute stroke and aphasia in order to enhance language recovery. Aphasic patients in an inpatient neurorehabilitation facility who have experienced a stroke between one week and three months prior to enrollment will be invited to participate. Participants will receive either real or sham tDCS to the left hemisphere of the brain for a minimum of 5 consecutive sessions to up-to a max of 10 sessions depending on the length of their rehab stay . Stimulation will be paired with with the patient's normal speech therapy schedule. Participant's language skills will be assessed at baseline and immediately after the last session of therapy in order to determine whether tDCS is associated with either transient or persistent improvement in language.

Our current biological understanding of stroke recovery in humans is extremely limited and this lack of knowledge is a major challenge in reducing stroke disabilities and deficits. Evidence of neural repair in humans can be gleaned indirectly through functional outcome measures, but we propose that metabolomics may also provide a minimally invasive window into human brain repair. This study will integrate clinical imaging and molecular biomarkers as a diagnostic tool in further understanding stroke recovery mechanisms.

Different studies showed large variation between care processes in multiple diseases, which lead to large variation in outcomes. Better adherence to evidence-based guidelines for these diseases can reduce this variation and can improve the health outcomes. Since international studies have demonstrated wide variations in care processes for acute stroke, it would be interesting to repeat these investigations in the population of stroke patients. Worldwide, stroke is a leading cause of disability and death. Every two seconds, someone across the world experiences a symptomatic stroke. 50% of stroke survivors has moderate to severe neurologic deficits, 25% of them depend on others. In Belgium, stroke is one of the most important causes of invalidity. Every year approximately 18 000 people in Belgium experiences a stroke, which results in almost one person every two hours, with a mortality rate of 30%. The world health organization has the ambition to significantly reduce the mortality and risk factors for non-communicable diseases by 2025. The mortality and disability in stroke patients can be reduced by organized stroke care, which includes effective strategies in stroke management, treatment and prevention. Also, other health domains, like functional recovery, healthcare costs and patient satisfaction, were positively related to adherence on stroke guidelines. This evidence had been converted in several clinical guidelines for stroke care. However, the adherence to these guidelines is variable. As already mentioned before, international studies have demonstrated wide variations in care processes for acute stroke. However, a positive relationship has been shown between the implementation of evidence-based clinical guidelines and the quality of stroke care. Therefore, it is important to both implement these guidelines and to improve the adherence to them. The aim of this study is to map the variation in stroke care in Flemish hospitals and to get an overview about the variation within and between these hospitals. During this study, electronic patient records will be analyzed to check which interventions are performed in a specific patient and of which no information could be found in de patient record.

To test capacity of chronic cerebellar stroke patients and healthy individuals to learn and retain a complex bimanual motor skill, trained on the neurorehabilitation robot REAplan® (bimanual version).

To assess whether PFO closure plus antiplatelet therapy is superior to antiplatelet therapy alone and whether oral anticoagulant therapy is superior to antiplatelet therapy to prevent stroke recurrence in patients aged 60 to 80 years with a PFO with large shunt (> 20 microbubbles) or a PFO associated with an ASA (> 10 mm), and an otherwise unexplained ischemic stroke.

This Phase 1b multiple center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study is a dose escalation trial evaluating the safety, tolerability, PK characteristics and efficacy of SY-007 after injection in acute ischemicstroke patients. The immunogenicity of SY-007 will be evaluated and this study will provide the recommended dosage for subsequent clinical trials.

The goal of this clinical trial is to compare the use of long-term vs. shorter-term heart monitoring to detect atrial fibrillation after stroke. Patients will be implanted with a loop recorder and will have study follow-up at 3-, 6- an 12-months after implantation. The investigators will evaluate 24 patients, between the 3 centers, in the same way the investigators plan to evaluate a larger number of participants (>1000) in a future study. This will allow us to learn if such a study is possible, identify potential implementation challenges, and develop strategies to overcome those difficulties.

A prospective pilot study to evaluate the recanalization and safety of mechanical thrombectomy through a cerebral angiogram in patients with stroke symptoms last seen normal between 8 - 24 hours.

The objective of the MEDIS study is to determine if subjects experiencing an Acute Ischaemic Stroke due to large vessel occlusion, treated with IV tPA combined with the MED procedure have a greater likelihood of recanalisation 30-90 minutes after the completion of tPA infusion than subjects treated with IV tPA (plus sham device). Safety of the MED System Procedure will be evaluated by the incidence of symptomatic PH-2 haemorrhagic transformation within 24 hours following the procedure. Lastly, a health economics study will be conducted to estimate health care costs for each treatment.