A new technology involving the fusion of four different types of images into a 3-D map of a patient’s brain has helped University of Cincinnati (UC) specialists successfully remove a fist-sized tumor from the brain of an Indiana woman.
The surgery was performed at University Hospital by an eight-member team from the Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute.
“This marks the culmination of one of the most important developments in brain tumor surgery in the last 100 years,” says John Tew, MD, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic, professor of neurosurgery and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute.
The multiple brain scans were fused and installed into a surgical guidance computer, whose function is similar to a global positioning system. By revealing the tumor’s relationship to all of the functional centers, electrical pathways and arteries and veins in the patient’s brain, the technology enabled Tew and his team to map out a safe pathway to the tumor.
[...] This post was Twitted by designbyday [...]
yay for science
I wonder whether it was really all that positive the way they make it sound. The patient did not have much options left probably. A fist is not a small tumour and can’t believe that she did not suffer already from symptoms before and afterwards. Not that that does not makes this not a success in science. It’s more so that I start to wonder about the patient behind all of this and my interest is less focussed on this new technique. But they could not have done without this patient’s guidance in a way, unless they kept her talking for orther reasons.