Initial Worldwide Experience With the WATCHMAN Left Atrial Appendage System for Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation

Scientist have come up with a way to help prevent strokes. They deploy this small parachute device that seals off the Left Atrial Appendage (LAA). This parachute helps stop any clots that are formed in the heart from leaving and going to the brain, thus keeping strokes from happening. Patients with afib have to use blood thinners frequently to stop the coagulation and clot from forming. The thinners have a downfall and aren't the best for your body, especially for long periods of time. In another small blurb I read that it was a form of rat poison which just sounds bad!

This article grabbed my attention because my grandmother recently passed and had 6 strokes before doing so and my neighboy back home suffered from a massive stroke and has to relearn everything there is about life. He will never make a full recovery. It turned his familys' life upside down. They had to move and he hadn't retired yet. It's just a mess. So strokes for the time being feel pretty close to home for me. The article sounded like this procedure (Watchman Procedure) is only performed on people with atrial fibrillation, but it gives me hope that someday maybe we will have a better handle on strokes than just using thinners. While thinners are helpful they don't always get the job done.

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1188863