Full Description
Each year, nearly 700,000 people in the United States will have a stroke. A drug known as tPA can drastically reduce the long-term disability associated with stroke if it is administered within the first three hours after the event occurs. Many of those who are lucky enough to be treated with tPA have made full recoveries--to the extent that one can hardly believe they suffered a "real" stroke. Others still do not receive the drug; many suffer permanent disabilities, and many die.
Authors Zivin and Simmons argue that most Americans have never heard of tPA. Why would such an effective pharmaceutical, one that has a remarkable rate of success with the third leading killer of Americans, be so disregarded? tPA for Stroke: The Story of a Controversial Drug explains the drug's beginnings within pharmaceutical giant Genentech, and its eventual marginalization due to a convergence of unfortunate political, fiscal, and medical circumstances. Readers will learn about an extraordinary treatment for acute stroke that they may then seek if a stroke occurs and anyone interested in the unique process of drug development, marketing, and promotion, told from an insider's perspective, will have an interest intPA for Stroke.
Contents
To the Reader
PART ONE: Discovery
Chapter One
Code Stroke on Market Street
Chapter Two
Clotbuster: The Natural History
Chapter Three
Dead or Alive
Chapter 4
Brain-O
PART TWO: Change, Resistance, and Transformation
Chapter Five
The Brain Doctors Cometh - Slowly
Chapter Six
What Emergency?
Chapter Seven
Money and Brain
Chapter Eight
Deer in the Headlights
Chapter Nine
Call 911, 112, 15...Even 999
Chapter Ten
Persistence of a Most Controversial Drug
Chapter 11
Through the Looking Glass
Post-Script
The NINDS Stroke Study: A Personal Statement
List of Interviews
Bibliography
