New results show a revolutionary device can almost instantly reverse the damage for victims of a devastating stroke.

When a stroke cuts off blood flow to the brain, doctors must race against time to prevent disability or death. There is a clot-busting drug, but it must be given in the first three hours, and it doesn't work for everybody.

Now doctors are using a new, experimental device that's giving them an amazing advantage.

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Two and a half years ago, Robert Levy suffered a severe stroke.

"I was sort of lying there and I went, 'Where is my right arm?' And I reached over with my left arm and pulled it up onto me. I remember that vividly. It was just dead, nothing," Levy said.

Robert was a candidate for an experimental device called the Merci Retriever.

The corkscrew-like instrument is inserted into an artery in the thigh and carefully guided to the brain to actually pull the clot out of the blood vessel.

So far doctors have used the Merci Retriever on 114 patients. New study results show it restored blood flow in more than half of those patients, and a third suffered little or no disability from their stroke.

"We've had those successes where patients have their stroke symptoms reversed right on the table, just as the clots being retrieved," said Dr. Sidney Starkman of the UCLA Stroke Center.

Robert Levy remembers his own experience.

"They said, 'Can you move your right leg?' And I moved it. 'Can you move your right arm?' And I moved it. 'You know who you are?" I said, 'Robert Levy,' and they like jumped for joy."

The Merci Retriever gives doctors another advantage. Patients who weren't eligible for standard drug therapy could have their strokes reversed up to eight hours after the onset of symptoms.