Podcast: Can Stem Cells Help Patients “Locked Inside” Their Own Bodies?
Dr. Dileep Yavagal speaks with Dean Ford about using stem cells to help restore function after a severe brainstem stroke.
Locked-in syndrome is one of the most haunting conditions in medicine. It is a state where the patient is fully conscious but unable to move or speak after a catastrophic stroke. For decades, physicians could offer little more than supportive care. Recovery, when it happened at all, was rare and often minimal.
But a pioneering physician-scientist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine is working to change that.
In the newest episode of “Inside U Miami Medicine,” world-renowned stroke expert Dileep Yavagal, M.D., chief of interventional neurology and professor of clinical neurology and neurosurgery at the Miller School, explores a medical first: using stem cells to help restore function in patients who were once completely locked in after a severe brainstem stroke.
“In a large-vessel stroke, 2 million neurons die every minute,” said Dr. Yavagal, who is also director of the neurological stem cell platform at the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute.
Dr. Yavagal’s team was the first in the world to deliver stem cells directly to stroke-injured brain regions within days of the event. Four patients have already been treated under FDA compassionate use, showing both safety and remarkable signs of recovery, including one patient who regained the ability to sit up and feed himself.
The episode also dives into Dr. Yavagal’s global work advancing mechanical thrombectomy, the clot-removal procedure now considered the worldwide standard of care for the deadliest strokes, and his international initiative, Mission Thrombectomy, which is transforming stroke access in more than 90 countries.
Hear how groundbreaking interventions are changing outcomes for some of the most devastating strokes.
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Tags: Department of Neurology, Dr. Dileep Yavagal, Inside U Miami Medicine podcast, neurology, neuroscience, stroke