Medical Breakthroughs: New device helping treat brain aneurysms
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Brain aneurysms impact more than six million people in the United States, but oftentimes, people don't even know they have it.
For treatment, surgery can be complicated, but now a new device is helping.
It's thanks to this new device that doctors were able to prevent Judy Sadler's brain aneurysm from bursting.
"I woke up one morning and had a really bad bloody nose. So, I took my blood pressure, and it was over 200, and I thought, 'great'." Sadler said.
Sadler feared the worst.
An MRI revealed a brain aneurysm in the front part of her brain. Luckily, it hadn't ruptured.
"When that happens, an aneurysm bleeding in the brain, about 10 percent of people die immediately. The next 20 percent will not survive the hospital stay. The next third of patients will have a severe disability, and leaving about a third of people who could make it out of the hospital and return back to their life," Neurointerventional Surgeon Ian Kaminsky said.
A brain aneurysm is a bulge coming off a weakened part of an artery. Surgery involves stents and coils to block off the aneurysm.
Kaminsky is part of a nationwide clinical trial testing the contour neurovascular system to shut off the aneurysm without using stents or coils.
"It opens inside the aneurysm and blocks the flow from going into it because of how tight that mesh density is," Kaminsky said.
It destroys the aneurysm. The procedure and recovery time are both shorter.
Kaminsky expects the clinical trial to last another few years before the move towards getting FDA approval. They hope to study the contour device on 200 people across the country and are still enrolling patients.
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