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Balloon Helps Doctor Reach Brain Tumor
Anml4ixoye writes "A neurosurgeon at Cincinnati Children's Hospital has succesfully completed removal of a tumor in an previously thought inoperable part of the brain. The doctor, Kerry Crone expanded a balloon at the end of a cathader to push the neurons aside and remove the tumor, which was located at the thalamus. CNN is also running the story."
...an airhead guinea pig! But thank the Lord he is doing OK. It is wonderful to hear just plain good technologically-related news once in awhile amidst the controversy surrounding most news.
..the doctor.. let him save many more children!
:)
God bless that kid.
Katherin
-Indian Programmer
This is similar to a technique that is used to create more skin for grafting in burn victims: a balloon is implanted underneath the scalp of the pediatric burn victim and is gradually inflated over time. The skin and subdermal tissues are stretched slowly and expand in size, much like the abdomen as we eat too much over the years.
After a month or so, you've got about two-thirds of a sphere of diameter of 8 cm, yielding maybe 128 cm^2 of usable skin for grafting onto the burn victim.
This is a great technique. The trick in surgery is not only taking out what doesn't belong there (the tumor) but leaving intact everything else which does belong there. The slow dissection into the brain teasing apart the structures without damaging them or putting too much pressure on them (which can also damage them by decreasing the blood flow into the area, and hypoxia for greater than a minute can be permanently damaging to neural tissue) or opening up vessels. Creating a tract and then allowing gradual pressure over a long period of time to separate the fascial (I know it's not really fascial, but the equivalent of it) planes seems like a great way to avoid damage. What the article doesn't address is how long a time period this takes place over (as I end this convoluted sentence a preposition with).