As Miguel Caraballo was exiting I-95 in downtown Miami earlier this year, he felt a strange tingle run down his spine. A few minutes later, he lost control and smashed his pickup into a wall near AmericanAirlines Arena.

Within minutes, paramedics took Caraballo, 54, to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where doctors diagnosed his symptoms as a massive stroke and prepared to operate.

He walked out of the hospital three days later. ''It's a miracle,'' said Caraballo, recounting the events of nine months ago. ``I'm walking and talking today because they saved my life.''

Caraballo benefited from the University of Miami's decision to bolster its stroke research center. In April 2007, the medical school hired Dr. Ralph Sacco as chairman of the neurology department, tapping him from Columbia University. Since then, Sacco has hired five faculty members for stroke and critical care, including stroke specialists, neurocritical care specialists and a neurology interventionist.

Today, UM doctors are experimenting with an array of stroke treatments: tiny vacuum cleaners that suck in clots. Minuscule corkscrews that clear clogged arteries like biological bulldozers. Machines that look like video game consoles that navigate through the human circulation system.

The January night Caraballo suffered his stroke, he felt only an electric-type zap down his spine. After his car crashed, he opened the door and collapsed onto Biscayne Boulevard. A friend pulled him away from oncoming traffic, and a police officer who had been behind him pulled over, thinking Caraballo was drunk.

Instead, a middle cerebral artery had been blocked by a clot, and the left side of Caraballo's brain was starving for blood and oxygen. Without treatment, he would have soon lost control of the right side of his body permanently.

''The left hemisphere of the brain is not only responsible for controlling the right side of your body, but also controlling important things that actually make us human beings -- such as understanding, cognition, speech,'' said Dr. Mohammad Aziz-Sultan, the neurosurgeon who operated on Caraballo.

When Caraballo was wheeled into the emergency room, ''he was unable to speak . . . unable to move the right side of his body,'' Aziz-Sultan said. ``Luckily, through the collaboration with the emergency technicians in the ambulance, the ER physicians who were able to recognize this and a stroke neurologist, we were able to get this patient to the angio suite, where we do our work.''

Doctors inserted a thin wire catheter through Carballo's femoral artery in his groin. Using X-ray machines and a computer that maps the inside of the human body, they navigated the catheter through Caraballo's bloodstream. They made their way up the torso, bypassed the heart, slid up the neck and entered the brain's maze of arteries and veins.

The catheter, tipped with a balloon, arrived at the clot. Using their computers, the doctors inflated the balloon, which expanded the artery, restoring blood flow to the area. They injected a solution to dissolve the clot.

''The longer the period of time that you have without blood supply to the brain, the greater the chance that the brain will be dead forever,'' said Aziz-Sultan.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, affecting the elderly and Hispanics more than the average population, Sacco said.

Strokes occur when a clot blocks the flow of blood to a part of the brain, rendering it useless. If it is not treated within a few hours, the damage to the brain can become permanent.

Of the 750,000 strokes in the United States annually, only 1 or 2 percent of them get the clot-buster drug needed for emergency treatment, Sacco said.

''We're trying to find ways to increase the amount of acute stroke therapies that can be provided to people,'' Sacco said. ``Some of the ways are public awareness campaigns, acute stroke centers.''

Caraballo, who used to smoke heavily before the stroke, has made a full recovery. He was recently laid off from work as a heavy equipment operator but is glad to be alive.

He says he quit smoking and that surviving a stroke made him thankful.

''I'm glad they tried that procedure on me,'' he said. ``As you can see, today I don't have any symptoms of having had a stroke.''

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