March is DVT Awareness Month - Seeing The Culprit: Draxis’ Nuclear Medicine Strives for Faster Detection Of DVT - A Common but Serious Medical Condition
March is Deep-Vein Thrombosis (DVT) Awareness Month, a public health initiative to educate healthcare professionals and consumers about this serious, potentially life-threatening but preventable medical condition.
(PRWEB) March 4, 2005 -- DVT describes a blood clot (thrombus) in a major
vein, usually in the lower leg or thigh. According to the American Heart
Association, up to 2 million Americans develop DVT each year, and an estimated
600,000 go on to develop Pulmonary Embolism (PE), a potentially fatal
complication where blood clots affect the lungs and eventually the heart. An
estimated 200,000 people die each year from PE in the U.S. – more than AIDS and
breast cancer combined.
Symptoms of DVT may include pain, sudden swelling
in the calf or thigh, tenderness, discoloration or redness, and skin that is
warm to the touch. Surprisingly, these symptoms are often mistaken for other
diseases and as many as half of all DVT episodes produce minimal symptoms or are
completely “silent” and remain undiagnosed until they lead to a life threatening
pulmonary embolism.
Ultrasound is the most common diagnostic tool for DVT
but is not considered particularly accurate below the knee, where many clots
begin to form, and it only has approximately 60% sensitivity for asymptomatic
DVT. Venography is a painful and much less commonly used procedure where a
contrast agent is injected into a vein on top of the foot and X-rays are used to
track the solution through the vein of the leg. However, the same type of
nuclear medicine procedure that is used today for liver, lung, bone and brain
scans may one day help physicians rapidly detect the active clotting process in
DVT.
A new diagnostic imaging agent, called Fibrimage®, under
development by Canadian-based Draxis Health, aims to make DVT detection quicker
and more reliable. Researchers at Draxis Health are investigating whether
Fibrimage® can accurately check for newly-forming thrombus (blood clots) in the
large, deep veins in the lower limbs. These dangerous clots can be caused by a
variety of risk factors and triggered by either increasing age, obesity, cancer
or decreased blood flow resulting from restricted mobility following major
surgery such as joint replacements.
This innovative diagnostic approach
starts with an injection of Fibrimage® in the arm. The active agent in
Fibrimage® binds to human fibrin, part of an actively forming blood clot, and
within two hours the clot can be seen on a gamma camera. The procedure is
expected to allow physicians to distinguish, with a high degree of sensitivity,
a new active thrombus from any older and less threatening stabilized
clots.
“Most doctors rely on conventional ultrasound scans to make a
diagnosis, but ultrasound cannot distinguish whether the clot is an active clot
needing urgent attention or a chronic inactive clot,” said Dr. Martin Barkin,
CEO of Draxis Health, “Our goal is to develop Fibrimage®, to the point that it
can be a reliable diagnostic agent for the early detection of deep venous
thrombosis, and recurrent deep venous thrombosis so that life-saving therapy can
be targeted at the affected patient in a timely way and long term complications
can be minimized.”
A late stage clinical trial of Fibrimage® as a
diagnostic agent for deep venous thrombosis is nearing completion in Canada and
discussions are on-going with the FDA to conduct an additional late stage trial
in the United States.
For more information, log onto www.draximage.com
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb214816.htm