New tool to find blood clots

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Thursday, July 6, 2017
New tool to find blood clots
New tool to find blood clots. Ali Gorman reports during Action News at 5 p.m. on July 6, 2017.

Blood clots can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and pulmonary embolisms. Finding them earlier, when they're smaller, can save lives.

A new tool from German researchers is an injectable tracer that only latches onto the prime blood chemical involved in forming clots.

Where there's a clot, it glows during a PET scan, even if the clot is small.

Instead of using different imaging machines to find clots in different portions of the body, the tracer enables doctors to find clots anywhere with just the PET scan.

It's already being tested in humans.

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