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The Rush University Medical Center offers a newly approved FDA treatment for brain aneurysms that is safer for patients and has a shorter recovery time than other treatments.
Rush is the first university medical center in Illinois and the first comprehensive stroke center in the state to offer the Woven EndoBridge aneurysm embolization system (WEB) , a minimally invasive option for treating wide-necked bifurcation aneurysms in certain areas of the brain.
This new device changes the game for patients with complex brain aneurysms. Before this major advance in endovascular treatment, treatment was often more risky and difficult for a significant number of these patients. "
Dr. Webster Crowley, Chief of Cerebrovascular and Endovascular Neurosurgery at Rush
Aneurysm is an enlarged and weakened area of a bulging or balloon artery. If left untreated, it can break out, often resulting in severe disability, cognitive loss or death.
It is estimated that six million people in the United States have an unruptured brain aneurysm.
Wide-bifurcated aneurysms occur at a point in an artery where they branch into two arteries and account for 35% of all cerebral aneurysms.
The WEB device is comprised of ultra-thin wires braided together to form a flexible and self-expanding mesh that effectively blocks the aneurysm.
During the WEB system procedure, a small catheter is threaded into a tiny incision in the groin area and pbades through the patient's arteries to the site of the aneurysm.
Using radioscopic imaging, the surgeon deploys the WEB device into the aneurysm sac where the flexible mesh marries the wall of the aneurysm, thereby minimizing blood flow to inside the aneurysm. Compared to the current endovascular treatment in which multiple coils are placed inside the aneurysm, a single WEB is required for an aneurysm.
In most cases, over time, the body closes the neck of the aneurysm, essentially curing it.
"If we can repair the aneurysm before it breaks, then the threat of this aneurysm will explode and the dying patient will essentially disappear," Crowley said.
The WEB device allows physicians to treat wide-neck aneurysms without the need to place stents in the brain, which prevents patients from taking anticoagulant drugs after the procedure, such as Plavix, which are used for stents. The new device also reduces the endovascular procedure time in the treatment of aneurysms compared to alternative therapies.
In clinical trials, the WEB system has proven to be very effective and safer than other options.
The minimally invasive nature of the procedure means that most patients can go home the next day.
In addition to unruptured aneurysms, the WEB system can be used in some cases where the aneurysm has already broken down, potentially offering more desirable treatment options.
"Prior to the placement of this device, wide-necked aneurysms often required open-brain surgery to cut the aneurysm because a stent was not ideal in these patients because of the need for to thin the blood, "said Crowley. "This device will allow us to endovascularly treat a much larger number of aneurysms than ever before, and fewer patients may need a surgical cut of their aneurysm."
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