Clinical Trial Underway For New Treatment Of Brain Aneurysms

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - When it comes to brain aneurysms, many of them go undetected.

But, if they rupture, they can have devastating consequences.

Now, there's a new therapy to stop potentially deadly aneurysms from bursting.

Donna Murphy had a hidden danger lurking inside her head.

"I woke up and I felt dizzy and they did an MRI and thank God they did because they found out that I had a brain aneurysm," Murphy said.

Brain aneurysms are commonly treated with open brain surgery, but Murphy, who drives a school bus, and was anxious to get back to work, didn't want that.

"I didn't want to have my skull opened if I didn't have to, that was for sure," she said.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Ali Aziz Sultan offered her a new, less-invasive treatment as part of an ongoing clinical trial.

Surgeons make an incision in an artery in the groin and thread a spherical mesh structure, called a web device, up into the brain.

"Which goes inside the aneurysm, causes blood flow to clot inside the aneurysm, but still through its mesh, allows blood to go to surrounding vessels," Dr. Sultan said.

Even before she had the procedure, Dr. Sultan and his team practiced putting the device into her aneurysm using a plastic 3D printer model of her brain vessels.

Later that day, they did it for real, on Murphy.

"From my experience, it was a no-brainer. It was an absolute no-brainer. Not one bit of problem," Murphy said.

"It's important to continually push the frontiers of the field in order to make things safer and better and faster for patients," Dr. Sultan said.

If all goes well with the clinical trial, this kind of treatment may be available to the general public within the next few years.

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