Stanford Researchers Just Developed a ‘Game-Changing’ Stroke Treatment

A team of Stanford researchers has unveiled a new specialized surgical tool called the milli-spinner, a miniaturized rotor that might finally make stroke treatment, very literally, suck less.

Strokes, especially the ischemic kind that clog up brain blood flow, are typically treated with thrombectomy. That method involves threading a catheter into the brain and either vacuuming out or grappling the clot like a claw machine.

The approach is dicey, to say the least. There’s a lot of hoping and praying involved, as it often ends with fragments of the clot shooting off in different directions, nestling in hard-to-reach places.

This Tiny Spinning Tube Could Be the Future of Stroke Treatment

The milli-spinner is a spinning catheter that works like a microscopic weed-whacker for clots. Outfitted with fins and slits, this tiny tube applies just the right combo of compression and force to shrink and suck up the entire clot without blowing it to bits.

According to Stanford’s chief of neuroimaging, Jeremy Heit, it doesn’t just improve outcomes, it doubles success rates. Even against the most nightmarish of blood clots, first-try success made an incredible jump from 11 percent to a jaw-dropping 90 percent.

As Heit told Stanford Report, “It’s unbelievable.”

Renee Zhao, the mechanical engineer behind the device and the study’s co-author, says conventional tools rely on blunt force. They charge and yank, stretch, and rupture. Her invention, by contrast, gives the clot a polite but firm squeeze, shrinking it by up to 95 percent before removal.

No shrapnel. No drama. Just a clever little device that drastically reduces risk.

The milli-spinner is still in its experimental stage, but Zhao is already dreaming of other potential uses, some of them extending “beyond medicine.” While Zhao didn’t offer any examples of exactly how the milli-spinner can be used outside of medicine, I do have one suggestion: have you Stanford folks ever thought about disrupting the toilet snake industry?