A trial for the catheter-based treatment of deep vein thrombosis will evaluate the use of clot-dissolving drugs in conjunction with clot removal devices to prevent post- thrombotic syndrome (PTS) in patients with DVT.
PTS causes permanent damage to the veins, resulting in debilitating chronic leg pain, swelling, fatigue and ulcers. About 25% of patients currently develop PTS when being treated with blood thinners alone, which did not dissolve the existing clot. Preliminary studies have indicated that interventional clot-busting treatments can remove clots and have strong potential to prevent PTS.
The $10 million trial, ATTRACT, will be funded by the NHLBI and may fundamentally alter the way that DVT is treated in the USA, moving interventional radiology to the core of DVT treatment. ATTRACT ( Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis) is a multicenter randomized trial that will establish whether PTS can be definitively prevented with the use of interventional techniques.
If the trials prove to be successful, this is important news both in preventing PTS but also in the considerably greater use of interventional techniques in DVT.
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