Drugs Better Than Surgery For Preventing Stroke

Some strokes are caused by narrowed blood vessels in the brain. To reduce the risk of this type of stroke, people take blood thinners and other drugs. Doctors also often do surgery to inflate the blood vessel. But a national study has found that people who took risk-reducing drugs had fewer strokes and deaths, compared with patients who also had the surgery. The study included 451 people who had a stroke or were at high risk of a stroke in the brain. All of them took blood thinners and drugs to control high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Some also had surgery to insert a mesh tube called a stent. The stent keeps the blood vessel open so blood can flow through it. The study was stopped early because there were more than twice as many strokes in the stent group as there were in the drugs-only group. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.