Physician and engineers team up to stop deadly hemorrhages
Engineers and physicians at Vanderbilt University have created a device to carefully and accurately remove clots from the human brain.
Known in the medical community as an intracerebral hemorrhage, blood clots that form in the brain are some of the most difficult brain conditions to treat. What makes matters worse is that the condition isn’t all that rare and it’s fatal nearly 40 percent of the time.
Currently, the most effective practice for removing clots requires surgery, which is risky because it can harm healthy brain tissue. Even worse, when physicians decide surgery isn’t an option, their only recourse is to give a patient anti-inflammatory drugs which may or may not help.
To improve the effectiveness of clot removal Professors Robert J. Webster and Kyle Weaver are developing a telescoping surgical device that can accurate find and remove clots from the brain. Key to the devices ability is how the device navigates through the brain.
Guided by the high definition imagery of a CT scan the Vanderbilt device enters the brain through a tiny hole drilled into the patient’s skull. Once it has access to the brain, the device deploys a thin tube through the brain until it reaches the surface of the clot. To access the clot and remove its contents, a second tube embedded in the first enters the clot. Once the hemorrhage has been breached the device’s pump, resting safely outside the patients skull, begins to relieve the brain of the clot.
In lab tests, the Vanderbilt machine has been proven capable of removing up to 92 percent of simulated blood clots. In the coming months Vanderbilt engineers are planning on adding ultrasound imaging and simulations of how brains deform around clots to the device. With these new tools the device could become more effective at saving human brains.
Watch a Video of the Device in Action:
Images and Video Courtesy of Vanderbilt University