Brain Surgery Through the Nose
Reported December 04, 2009
NEW YORK (Ivanhoe Newswire) — Every year, 200,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with a brain tumor. A new 3-D tool is giving surgeons a new pathway to the brain that avoids cutting open the skull. Patients are wheeled out of the operating room with a scar as small as a band-aid.
Real estate broker Michael Weinberg wasn’t ready to slow down, but at 63, his body felt more like 85.
“I could feel a weakness in my bones, actually, when I walked,” Weinberg told Ivanhoe.
These weren’t typical aches of aging. Weinberg found out he had a brain tumor.
Before, surgery would mean opening Weinberg’s skull and cutting through the brain to get to the tumor.
“It involved big openings on side of the head, removing lots of bone, drilling out the side of the face, even opening up the whole face,” Theodore H. Schwartz, M.D., a neurosurgeon at NY-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, N.Y., told Ivanhoe.
Instead, Dr. Schwartz uses a 3-D approach. He inserts a camera mounted on the end of a tube and other surgical tools up the patient’s nose into the brain.
“It’s just like having a mobile eye, as if you were literally sitting inside someone’s nose, and operating in there,” Dr. Schwartz said.
Once doctors locate the tumor, they pull it out through the nose. Compared to traditional surgery, the 3-D approach lowers the risk of damaging arteries and nerves. The approach involves no incisions, and patients are usually in the hospital for two days compared to five.
“Most of the patients who awaken after this kind of surgery are surprised that it’s over,” Dr. Schwartz said. “They’re surprised that it’s done because all they have is a little band-aid under their nose.”
Surgeons removed all of Weinberg’s tumor with the new approach.
“My life today is a lot better than it’s been for several years,” Weinberg said.
He’s back to his routine and feeling younger everyday.
Risks of the 3-D approach include leakage of spinal fluid and the chance that the instruments cause bacteria to travel from the nose to the brain, leading to infection.
Source : Ivanhoe Newswire