VOA标准英语2012--New Drug Makes Surgery Safer For Patients With Stents

New Drug Makes Surgery Safer For Patients With Stents

Heart stents open blocked arteries¹ and restore blood flow. They can also help support weak arteries and keep them open. Stents are implanted during a common procedure called angioplasty.
During this procedure, the doctor threads a thin, flexible tube with a balloon or a similar device on the end through a blood vessel² to the narrow or blocked artery³.
After stenting, patients are put on a blood-thinning medicine to prevent clots⁴ in the stent. The problem comes when patients taking these drugs have to have heart surgery. Cardiologist Eric Topol sums up the dilemma⁵.
“The stakes are really high once a stent’s been placed in an artery of the heart and if a stent clots it either results in a heart attack or the patient dying,” Topol said.
Dr. Topol is the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. He co-authored a study involving 200 patients who had heart stents and who needed open heart surgery. Half the group was given a placebo⁶. The other half received a medication called cangrelor which patients receive intravenously.
"We were testing to see whether or not we could inhibit⁷ their platelets, which are the cells that form a blood clot," Topol said.
Cangrelor’s anti-clotting⁸ property loses effect within a few hours, so it can be discontinued just prior to surgery.
“The results were pretty striking on the side of being able to inhibit clotting. We were able to do that in all the patients, virtually, with this medicine cangrelor as compared to the placebo,” Topol said.
Not only were the patients able to have surgery sooner, Dr. Topol says, but they didn't have any trouble with bleeding.
"So now we have an intravenous medication that was tested which can be used in those days between stopping the oral medications and actually undergoing the major operation,” Topol said.
A report on the successful trial of the new anti-clotting drug, cangrelor, appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

1 arteries   

n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道

参考例句：

• Even grafting new blood vessels in place of the diseased coronary arteries has been tried. 甚至移植新血管代替不健康的冠状动脉的方法都已经试过。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This is the place where the three main arteries of West London traffic met. 这就是伦敦西部三条主要交通干线的交汇处。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

3 artery   

n.干线，要道；动脉

参考例句：

• We couldn't feel the changes in the blood pressure within the artery.我们无法感觉到动脉血管内血压的变化。
• The aorta is the largest artery in the body.主动脉是人体中的最大动脉。

4 clots   

n.凝块( clot的名词复数 )；血块；蠢人；傻瓜v.凝固( clot的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• When you cut yourself, blood clots and forms a scab. 你割破了，血会凝固、结痂。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Milk clots when it turns sour. 奶变酸就凝块。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

5 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。

6 placebo   

n.安慰剂；宽慰话

参考例句：

• The placebo has been found to work with a lot of different cases.人们已发现安慰剂能在很多不同的病例中发挥作用。
• The placebo effect refers to all the observable behaviors caused by placebo.安慰剂效应是指由安慰剂所引起的可观察的行为。

7 inhibit   

vt.阻止，妨碍，抑制

参考例句：

• Don't let ego and greed inhibit clear thinking and hard work.不要让自我和贪婪妨碍清晰的思维和刻苦的工作。
• They passed a law to inhibit people from parking in the street.他们通过一项法令以阻止人们在街上停车。

8 clotting   

v.凝固( clot的现在分词 )；烧结

参考例句：

• The study was also based only on the one anti-clotting drug. 所用抗血栓药物也仅限于一种。 来自互联网
• A plasma protein that is converted into thrombin during blood clotting. 凝血原酶一种血浆蛋白质，在血液凝聚时转化成凝血''。'酵'。''''。'素'。''。 来自互联网