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For Immediate Release
May 22, 2006
Mercy is First in Oklahoma to Use Lava-like Glue
to Stop Brain Bleeds
Oklahoma City—A 19-year-old Edmond resident and a
36-year-old Oklahoma City man were the first patients in the state to
undergo a procedure that will help ensure they don’t suffer any further
brain bleeds.
“Both of these patients had an arterio-venous
malformation, or AVM, which is an abnormal tangle of blood vessels in
the brain that can trigger massive bleeding,” said Tim Tytle, M.D., a
Mercy interventional radiologist. “Traditionally, surgery has been the
only option, but it’s very dangerous because the AVM is oftentimes very
large and deep inside the brain. We went in through a catheter to the
brain and injected a newly approved FDA substance called Onyx directly
into the AVM. The fluid works like lava. It flows, then hardens, cutting
off the blood supply to the AVM. It reduces the risk of another brain
bleed.”
Dr. Tytle, Dr. Vance McCollom and Dr. Robert
Handley—Mercy interventional radiologists—are charting a path in a new
area of medicine that is cutting edge but actually requires almost no
cutting. They are leading the nation with new technology and less
invasive approaches for patients—including brain stents, devices that
fish out blood clots in the brain and a clot-dissolving drug treatment
that gives stroke patients a six-hour window to get to the hospital. For
patients, interventional radiology provides hope where there wasn’t much
before. It is also minimally invasive, meaning patients often undergo a
shorter hospital stay and recover much more quickly.
“Interventional radiologists are able to see and
work inside the brain blood vessels and intervene in diseases that in
the past required major open brain surgery,” said Dr. Richard V. Smith,
medical director of Mercy NeuroScience Institute. “It’s a new frontier
in medicine.”
For Christopher Murugaya and Gonzalo Lopez-Atayde,
the AVMs were too large or difficult to approach to remove surgically.
Both men suffered severe headaches and bleeding in the brain after blood
vessels hemorrhaged.
“In order to protect them from another brain bleed,
we had to go in and block off the vessels,” said Dr. Tytle. “This
lava-like glue can also reduce the size of the AVM, making surgery or
Gamma Knife a future option to either further reduce the size of the AVM
or occasionally completely eliminate it.”
Other products have been available in the past but
they’ve been likened to super glue that sets up fast, not allowing
physicians time to maneuver inside the brain. For more information about
Mercy’s new procedure, call 936-5440.
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