For Immediate Release

November 12, 2003

Mercy Places First Stent Designed for the Brain

Oklahoma City— Mercy Health Center is the first facility in the state with the technology to treat patients with aneurysms without performing brain surgery.

This week, a Mercy patient with a “wide neck” aneurysm—among the most difficult aneurysms to treat—underwent a less invasive, endovascular procedure that places a stent at the area of the aneurysm via a catheter. Once the stent is in place, metallic coils are placed inside the aneurysm to decrease the chance the aneurysm will rupture.

Although there have been occasional attempts in the past to use cardiac stents in brains, they have been less successful because of the unique anatomy of the brain and stent properties. Boston Scientific’s Neuroform2 Microdelivery Stent System is the first specialty device approved by the FDA to be used for intracranial applications.

“Without a device like this, we wouldn’t have been able to treat this patient,” said Dr. Tim Tytle, a Mercy interventional radiologist. “It allows us to be able to remodel the artery and dramatically decrease the chance the aneurysm will rupture. About 25 percent of intracranial aneurysms have wide necks and without the Neuroform device, it was difficult, if not impossible to treat them without major surgery.”

If not for this new technology, patients would have the choice of two types of surgery. One involves removing a section of the skull and placing one or more metal clips across the aneurysm neck. The other surgery involves tying off the blood vessel that supplies blood to the artery with the aneurysm. (But tying off vessels doesn’t always lower the chance an aneurysm will rupture and sometimes can’t be performed because of the location of the aneurysm.)

Studies have shown that the risk of death or disability a year after undergoing a stent and coil procedure may be less than undergoing an open surgical procedure with metal clips. In an earlier aneurysm trial with more than 2,000 patients, the trial was halted after it was determined that the success of stents and coils was so much greater that it was deemed no longer ethical to randomize patients to neurosurgical clipping.

Mercy Health Center is a member of the Mercy Health System of Oklahoma and the Sisters of Mercy Health System-St. Louis.

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