After a stroke, a new device can help to dissolve blood clots in the brain with ultrasound.When a stroke hits a patient fast help is critical. Every minute counts, especially when the stroke is caused by a blood clot, blocking the delivery of oxygen to brain cells. The sooner the clot is dissolved the smaller is the irreparable damage done to the brain. And the faster the brain – and thus the patient – can recover.A new device could soon be available to treat blood clots after stroke more effectively. The ClotBust ER developed by William Culp, M.D., professor of radiology, surgery and neurology and vice chairman of research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), and Doug Wilson, assistant director at the Graduate Institute of Technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR). Culp, a veteran in the research of stroke therapies, had already included using ultrasound in combination with the clot-busting drug tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) in his work. “The idea is to deliver ultrasound wherever the clot is and where the IV t-PA is working,” Culp said. “It makes t-PA work better – improving the clot-busting drug by 40 or 50 percent. It’s like taking a cooking pot and stirring it. The ultrasound stirs the drug around, making it work better.”One major problem in ultrasound stroke therapy though is getting the ultrasound to operate through the skull. Ultrasound can be delivered anywhere in a patient’s body unless the waves hit something hard like bone or something very soft, like air. And a skull is basically a sphere of massive bone.“We realized we had trouble delivering ultrasound to the vessels at the base of the brain”, Culp said. Culp teamed with Wilson to find a way for the ultrasound waves to reach the clot in a stroke patient’s skull through its few weak spots: the temples and the foramen magnum in the base of the skull.The result was the ClotBust ER, a circular device that is placed onto the patient’s head like a sports visor or halo. It has 16 transducers arranged around the inside – designed to line up with the thin points in the skull. This allows the ultrasound waves to move through the brain without being blocked.The device that is being produced at Cerevast™ Therapeutics, has already been tested in a Phase Three human trial in more than 300 patients with no significant adverse effects. “Our goal is to test 840 patients,” Culp said. “But right now the results are looking so promising that it is possible testing could be stopped early if the safety committee determines we don’t have to go any further.”66 other university sites already have signed up to be included in the testing since the trial period began. Culp is hopeful the device will be approved by the start of 2016.