New Liquid Treatment For Wide-Neck Brain Aneurysm
Posted by admin on Jan 31, 2008
Neurological surgeons at Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience are among the first surgeons in the United States using an FDA-approved flowing system for treating wide-necked brain aneurysms, which could eventually replace current treatments.
Principal investigator Erol Veznedaroglu, M.D., fellow professor of Neurological Surgery and director of the division of Neurovascular Surgery and Endovascular Neurosurgery, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, is one of the few surgeons selected to search into the use of a liquid embolic (blocking) system to fill wide-neck brain aneurysms, which have a wide opening where the aneurysm arises from the artery or blood vessel. A brain aneurysm is a weakness in a major blood vessel that causes a portion of the vessel wall to balloon out. This abnormality puts each individual at risk should the aneurysm break bounteous and lose blood.
“A wide-neck brain aneurysm is comparatively uncommon and occurs in about 25 percent of persons with brain aneurysms,” said Dr. Veznedaroglu. “Wide-neck aneurysms can be difficult to treat both surgically (brain surgery to clip off the aneurysm) and endovascularly (treatment done from within the consanguinity vessel), which are methods used to treat other types of brain aneurysms.”
“The potential benefit of the liquid embolic system may be the complete or partial blockage of the blood supply to the aneurysm,” said Deborah L. August, M.D., MPH, director of Clinical Research in the department of Neurological Surgery, Jefferson. “It may also help to correct or lessen some symptoms.”
Current treatments for brain aneurysms include open brain surgery to clip the aneurysm and coil embolization or coiling, less-invasive surgical procedure. toward coiling, a catheter is inserted into an artery in the groin, then advanced into the affected artery in the brain. X-rays are used to guide the catheter into the artery.
“Coils are the most commonly used embolization device but some wide-neck aneurysms have such a large opening that the coils may not stay in the interior of the aneurysm sac,” said Dr. Veznedaroglu. “In this case, the coils can fall back into the offspring vessel and block or partly block the blood flow.”
Researchers noted that they are not recruiting patients, as this is not a clinical study.
Rather, this is a Humanitarian Use Device which is used to diagnose or treat a disease or condition that affects fewer than 4,000 individuals in the United States per year and for what one. no comparable device is available.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows physicians to use such a device under a Humanitarian Device Exemption, when a device maker chooses not to do formal research studies to test a product as it would be used to treat a smaller population of patients.
“Before the FDA gave the exemption, it looked at facts given by the maker of the device and resolute that the likely risks of using the rule are within reason, compared to the possible benefits of using this device and compared to other treatments for a wide neck aneurysm,” said Dr. August. “Research studies have not been conferred to show whether this combination of parts to form a whole works for treating wide-neck aneurysms.”
By filling the aneurysm sac or pocket with the liquid, blood flow into the aneurysm is blocked, helping to prevent the aneurysm from rupturing or increasing in size.
This treatment is done endovascularly and essentially consists of inserting a catheter into the blood vessel to cut off the blood supply. The material is delivered by slow-controlled injection through a very micro-size catheter into the aneurysm under x-ray visualization. The catheter is initially inserted into a vessel in the groin area and threaded to the vessel where the aneurysm is located. The material enters the aneurysm as a liquid through the catheter and then begins to solidify from the outside to the inside with ultimate solidification or embolization occurring within five minutes.
To be eligible for such a procedure, a patient must 18 years or older, not have an intracranial stent and/or coils or severe liver or kidney malady. Women who are pregnant or nursing are too not eligible.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original force a way release.
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Source: Jeff Baxt
Thomas Jefferson University