Clot-Busting Drugs Save Frostbitten Limbs from Amputation

Doctors using specialized imaging methods to precisely deliver drugs to frostbitten hands and feet may be able to save them from amputation, researchers reported in an article by Reuters.

The radiologists used angiography, an X-ray of the blood vessels, to confirm loss of blood flow in the severely frostbitten hands and feet of 17 patients. They threaded catheters into the arteries to directly deliver clot-busting drugs to dissolve the blood clots and anti-spasmodics to relax the arteries. This helped 90 percent of the patients, they said at a meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in Washington DC.

"Previously, severe frostbite was a one-way route to limb loss. This treatment is a significant improvement," said Dr. George Edmonson, an interventional radiologist with St. Paul Radiology in St. Paul, Minnesota, who worked on the study. "We're opening arteries that are blocked so that tissues can heal and limbs can be salvaged. We were able to reopen even the smallest arteries, saving patients' fingers and toes."

Severe frostbite can block blood flow and cause small clots to form. These clots can worsen already slowed blood flow. "For half our patients who received the clot-busting drug Tenectaplase, this technique worked beautifully, saving all fingers, hands, toes, and feet that otherwise would have been lost," Edmonson said. "Overall, in about 80 percent of the cases, it significantly improved patients' outcomes. Within one to three days of treatment, we saw improvement."