Friday, June 11, 2010

New entry effective in deep brain surgery

BALTIMORE, June 10 (UPI) -- U.S. surgeons say they've developed a safe, effective and less invasive entry method to use in skull and deep brain surgical procedures.
Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore report safely entering into the brains of a dozen patients by making a small incision through the natural creases of an eyelid.
They said access to the skull and brain through either lid, formally known as a transpalpebral orbitofrontal craniotomy, sharply contrasts with the more laborious, physically damaging and invasive, traditional means of entry -- opening of the top half of the skull.
"Going through the eyelid offers a simpler, more direct route to the middle and front regions of the brain than traditional skull-based surgery," said Dr. Kofi Boahene, who led the research. He said the approach eliminates the need for shaving the patient's hair, pulling up the scalp, opening the top half of the skull and moving aside whole outer sections of the brain in order to operate on the organ's neurological tissue.
The Johns Hopkins team said it believes the findings mark the first published case studies of the procedure.
The research appears in two reports -- one in the June issue of the Journal of Otolaryngology and the other to appear in the July issue of the journal Skull Base.

No comments:

Post a Comment