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Science

Balloon Helps Doctor Reach Brain Tumor 33

Posted by michael from the coming-through dept.
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."
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Balloon Helps Doctor Reach Brain Tumor More

Balloon Helps Doctor Reach Brain Tumor

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  • I wonder... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gunsmithy ( 554829 ) on Sunday March 14, 2004 @08:38PM (#8564869) Homepage
    ...how long it'll take Richard Branson to express annoyance that he hasn't taken a balloon there yet.

  • Argh. (Score:4, Funny)

    by E_elven ( 600520 ) on Sunday March 14, 2004 @08:50PM (#8564933) Journal
    I am going to STRANGLE (Seriously Terribly Restrict Airflow 'N Get Lungs Exploding) the person who comes up with these witty acronyms. I'm pretty sure it's just one guy in some corner office.

    • Re:Argh. (Score:4, Informative)

      by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Sunday March 14, 2004 @09:28PM (#8565121)
      For anyone wondering what parent is ranting about:
      Dr. Crone calls the procedure SMART surgery (Specialized Minimal Access Resection Techniques). This technique is one of many new surgical procedures offered by the Minimally Invasive Neurosurgical Division (The MIND) at Cincinnati Children's.
      I think that's the paragraph that really got him going. I agree it's stupid (we're talking about brain surgery here aswell.. these are some awful puns. jees.)
    • We have a clean room nearby that's called ACE (advanced clean environment, or similar). I'm trying to come up with a recursive acronym "CLEAN", but I keep stalling on the N, Eg: Clean Lab Environment And ____. Anyone got any suggestions?

    • Re:Argh. (Score:3, Funny)

      by homerjfong ( 709647 )
      Quit being such a CHUMP (Complaining Human Uttering Meaningless Phrases).

    • Re:Argh. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Aerion ( 705544 )
      But cheesy acronyms are very useful, especially for the public, who can be in most cases assumed to have a short attention span. People are more likely to remember something called "SMART surgery" than some obscure acronym like "PTODPTTBIBT" ("Procedure To Operate On Deep, Previously Thought To Be Inoperable Brain Tumors").

      "SMART" is also a little bit easier to pronounce.
      • 'than some obscure acronym like "PTODPTTBIBT"'

        Which could be pronounced "pbhthtth!"

        Imagine the fun of Doctors telling patients the surgery they'll need. "Well, it's an experiemental surgery. We just say -pbhththh-."

      • But cheesy acronyms are very useful, especially for the public, who can be in most cases assumed to have a short attention span. People are more likely to remember something called "SMART surgery" than some obscure acronym like "PTODPTTBIBT" ("Procedure To Operate On Deep, Previously Thought To Be Inoperable Brain Tumors").

        Acronyms are also useful in 'everday' conversation and writing(I.E. between those in the field). It's much easier to type/say 'CATS' than 'Cheap Acess to Space', SSTO (single stage to

  • ...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.

  • it's spelled: "catheter" (Score:4, Informative)

    by ubiquitin ( 28396 ) * on Sunday March 14, 2004 @09:00PM (#8564996) Homepage Journal

    catheter, n. a hollow flexible tube for insertion into a body cavity, duct, or vessel to allow the passage of fluids or distend a passageway. Uses include the drainage of urine from the bladder through the urethra or insertion through a blood vessel into the heart for diagnostic purposes.

    For further meanings, see here [reference.com].

  • Much better method (Score:5, Funny)

    by spitzak ( 4019 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @12:11AM (#8565880) Homepage
    Before now, these operations could only be done by miniaturizing a small submarine and 5-person crew and injecting them into the bloodstream, so that they could reach the clot and destroy it with a miniaturized industrial laser. This was an extremely expensive operation, and risky due to the fact that the miniaturization only lasted an hour.

  • The Real Tragedy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 15, 2004 @03:11AM (#8566539)
    It's rather sad that this brilliant breakthrough in neural surgery has generated such a lackluster response on this forum. Absolutely no sense of acknowledgement of what a completely righteous hack this is to deal with a rather fatal problem.

    Quick, someone bring SCO up, I'm sure we can break the comments on this article up to at least low single digits instead of the twenty odd present.

    • such a lackluster response on this forum

      Doctors tend to be quite busy, I'm not surprised that there aren't many neurosurgeons reading Slashdot. Thankfully.
    • I thought it was an extremely ingenious way of solving the problem of getting the tumor out. I wonder if he went to undergraduate school for engineering.

  • Long live... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Katherin ( 748211 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @06:40AM (#8567073)
    ..the doctor.. let him save many more children!

    God bless that kid.

    Katherin
    -Indian Programmer :)

  • Air and Time (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kris_lang ( 466170 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @12:40PM (#8569686)
    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).
  • Hanging around a hospital for a few days with an inch-wide hole in your skull has got to just suck, but it sounds a lot better than the alternatives. I guess the doc still has to puncture through the brain, so there would be some residual effects, but again, it's better than just dying off.

    There was a good bit of "support our favorite incumbent" back-patting in the Cincinnati article, RE: the MRI that was used (Docs use MRI to help save kid + Legislator "provides" funding for MRI == Legislator saves kid
    • The Three-Tesla MRI is okay, and clinical use of it is a new development. I've sat in one during its experimental phase and with the wrong pulse sequences, you can actually feel induced currents (or I guess the effects of the induced currents) in your nerves. There are Twelve-Tesla magnets used for imaging mice: one I've seen at CalTech, and quite a few others around the world. The 12-T MRIs can just about see intracellular structures.

      The thing they were hyping was using fMRI (functional MRI) which invo

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