It's been a long and often controversial road, but U.S. doctors are finally embracing a drug that can halt strokes and prevent disabling brain damage. An of more than 1 million stroke patients shows that use of the 17-year-old drug, called alteplase (brand-name ), nearly doubled between 2003 and 2011. The study indicates that use of the therapy jumped from 43 percent to 77 percent over the past decade among those lucky patients who got to a hospital within two hours of their first stroke symptoms and had no disqualifying factors.
