Dr. Sidney Starkman, co-director of the UCLA stroke center, on the principle behind the "surgical corkscrew," new from Concentric Medical of Mountain View, California.

The device is a miniature wire corkscrew inside a slender catheter. It's inserted in the groin via a small skin incision, and threaded up into the brain's arterial system to the site of a blood clot. There the corkscrew-like wire is threaded into the mass of the clot. The clot is then removed along with the wire.

Said Starkman, "Many of the patients were paralyzed on one side, or could not talk when the procedure began [it's performed with the patient awake, to monitor ongoing effects of the catheter, both good and bad]. What's really remarkable is we can see the problem and pull it out. In some patients, the moment the clot came out, they could move again or talk normally. It was instantaneous."

If I were graduating from medical school this spring, I would choose neuroradiology as my specialty. The intricacy, the precision, the creativity, the hand-skills required, are what I love. The fact that these specialists average around $750,000 annually isn't exactly off-putting, either.