Treatment for Cranial Aneurysm
The treatments for blood vessel diseases are fascinating, although scary for the families that must undergo them. One of our 9G students emailed me with details of the procedure to treat a cranial aneurysm, since he had a family member undergo the "microcoil thrombosis."
A neurosurgeon threads a catheter up into the arteries of the brain until he or she reaches the aneurysm. The surgeon inserts tiny platinum coils, shaped like springs, into the bulging-out section. The coils attract blood, filling the aneurysm with a big blood clot that prevents blood (and blood pressure) from pushing on the weak section of the vessel. My student tells me that every inch of the coil costs $900!
Read about the proceedure here.
4 comments:
Nicholas 9969
I wonder how long this treatment has been around. My friend's mother passed away a few years back due to a cranial aneurysm, and I'm sure his family would have gladly paid $900 for an inch of anything that would have saved her. Hopefully the clotting blood inside the aneurysm doesn't attract too many platelets or let blood cells spill out back into the artery. What special property does platinum have that attracts blood cells so well?
Bryan 4270
I read the aboe comment and was wondering the same about platinum. So, I surfed the web a bit and found this article which might answer your question.
"the positively charged platinum theoretically attracts the negatively charged blood elements such as white and red blood cells, platelets, and fibrinogen..."
http://www.neurosurgery.pitt.edu/endovascular/treatments/gdc.html
J Aaron 8021
This procedure makes me cringe. I really don't know why, but it scares me a little bit. I don't know if I can handle the though of having a coil go into my brain starting from the lower region of my body. It's quite, disturbing to me. Makes me shake a little. Then again, some people weren't meant for this kind of thing. Guess I'm not one of them. What I'm wondering is though, is the coil just left there for good?
http://www.brainaneurysm.com/aneurysm-treatment.html
Leticia, 1849
Wow! The whole procedure sounds uncomforting from the start of the coiling process with general anesthesia to the Intensive Care after the treatment for 24 to 36 hours. It is incredible how the coiling process takes affect into having the aneurysm packed with coils. On the pictures displayed on the article showing the strings of coils attached to the aneurysm, the strings are lenghty. For $900 an inch this comes out to $18,000 for 20 inches! I guess sometimes life does have a price.
affiliated article:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7295225&dopt=Abstract
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