Background: Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) carries a high economic cost and clinical morbidity in the United States. Beyond prolonged admissions and poor post-injury functional status, there is an additional cost of chronic shunt-dependent hydrocephalus for many aSAH patients. Adjuvant lumbar drain (LD) placement has been hypothesized to promote clearance of subarachnoid blood from the cisternal space, with an ultimate effect of decreasing shunt placement rates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Povidone-iodine, or Betadine® (Atlantis Consumer Healthcare Inc., Bridgewater, NJ), is a commonly used agent for surgical site preparation. Although commonly used, it carries the risk of skin reactions, and multiple cases of intra-operative contact dermatitis and chemical burns have been reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOf the 750,000 strokes in the United States every year, 15% patients suffer from hemorrhagic stroke. Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a subtype of hemorrhagic stroke. Despite advances in acute management, patients with hemorrhagic stroke continue to suffer from high mortality and survivors suffer from multidomain impairments in the physical, cognitive, and mental health domains which could last for months to years from their index stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Recruitment of diverse and talented students to the field of neurosurgery is key to its continued growth and scientific advancement. Barriers, including poor perceptions and lack of early exposure, can impact recruitment and have been compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines the impact of an inaugural Neurosurgery Research Consortium meeting on premedical students, assessing whether this exposure generated interest and improved perceptions of a career in neurosurgery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There is little evidence in scientific literature assessing the safety and efficacy of dual-lumen balloon catheters (DLBCs) and their performance compared to single-lumen catheters (SLCs).
Methods: In this PROSPERO-registered, PRISMA-compliant systematic review, we identified all MEDLINE and EMBASE single-arm (DLBCs) and double-arm (DLBCs vs SLCs) cohorts where DLBCs were used for the treatment of cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) or dural arteriovenous fistulas (dAVFs). Immediate angiographic outcome, vascular complications, technical failures, reflux episodes and entrapment were the primary outcomes.
Introduction: Wide-necked middle cerebral artery bifurcation aneurysms pose specific challenges to endovascular management. Surgical clipping remains the standard treatment approach for these aneurysms in many centers. While recent data suggests the endovascular treatment may be comparable, a prospective datapoint has been lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Investigations into the effect of previous stroke on thrombectomy outcomes have yielded conflicting results, and are limited by small sample sizes. We present the results of a large single center retrospective study aimed at investigating the effect of chronic stroke laterality on thrombectomy outcomes.
Methods: A prospectively maintained database was queried for all thrombectomy cases conducted between December 2014 and January 2020, and patient imaging was prospectively reviewed for evidence of prior supratentorial infarction.
Multiple de novo brain arteriovenous malformations (bAVM) have been reported in the literature, raising questions about the contended purely congenital nature of these lesions. We present the 15-year course of a pediatric patient, who initially presented at age 5 with a thalamic cavernous malformation and was treated with radiosurgery, and then subsequently developed a thalamic de novo bAVM immediately adjacent to the initial lesion location, discovered 2 years later. Treatment of the bAVM entailed two transarterial embolizations and one radiosurgery session which ultimately led to complete angiographic resolution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Achieving distal access and flow control are of significant importance for the treatment of intracerebral arteriovenous shunting lesions. The Scepter Mini catheter is a low-profile, dual-lumen balloon catheter, designed to provide navigability in small-caliber, tortuous intracranial vessels.
Objective: To describe the initial experience of the Scepter Mini catheter in the treatment of pediatric arteriovenous malformations and fistulas.
Introduction: The delivery of flow-diverting stents (FDS) necessitates a degree of catheter support beyond that required for endovascular coiling. The TracStar Large Distal Platform (LDP) is a novel 0.088″ platform intended for navigation into the intracranial internal carotid artery (ICA).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Most conventional 0.088 inch guide catheters cannot safely navigate intracranial vasculature. The objective of this study is to evaluate the safety of stroke thrombectomy using a novel 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: A ranula is a mucus-filled salivary pseudocyst that forms in the floor of the mouth, commonly arising from the sublingual or submandibular salivary glands following obstruction or trauma. Complete excision of the injured gland and removal of the cyst content is the first-choice therapy, but has the potential for complications related to injury to nearby structures. As such, minimally invasive approaches such as percutaneous sclerotherapy have been investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Over the past several years there has been increased interest in the use of the Sofia aspiration system (MicroVention, Tustin, California) as a primary aspiration catheter.
Objective: To perform a multicenter retrospective study examining the efficacy of the Sofia aspiration catheter as a standalone aspiration treatment for large vessel occlusion.
Methods: Consecutive cases in which the Sofia catheter was used for aspiration thrombectomy for large vessel occlusion were included.
Endovascular thrombectomy has revolutionized the management of acute ischemic stroke from emergent large vessel occlusion. Continued technological advancement in the field, as evidenced by successive introduction of large bore aspiration catheters with enhanced trackability and large inner diameter, has played a major role in achieving fast and robust recanalization and improved clinical outcome. Here, we present three patients with intraprocedural device malfunction related to the JET 7 XTRA Flex reperfusion catheter.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: We retrospectively analyzed data of the BECOME trial to investigate whether serial administration of triple-dose (3-dose) gadopentetate dimeglumine would result in the development of T1 signal-to-noise (S/N) changes in the cranial diploic space and whether S/N changes correlated with on-study hypophosphatemia.
Methods: Signal intensity analysis was performed on the first year's data of the BECOME trial using 3-dose Gd (14 months, maximum number of doses, 39, mean: 36). Routine blood and urine tests were obtained each month for safety monitoring.
Two patients, separated by 1 year, underwent mechanical thrombectomy using next generation, highly navigable 0.088-inch large bore catheters, which were navigated to and aspirated within the M1 middle cerebral artery segment. Case 1 demonstrates the first reported clinical application of this technique used in conjunction with stent retriever and direct aspiration through an intermediate catheter, resulting in modified thrombolysis in cerebral infarction (mTICI) score 3 recanalisation, and a 90-day modified Rankin Score of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo patients, separated by 1 year, underwent mechanical thrombectomy using next generation, highly navigable 0.088-inch large bore catheters, which were navigated to and aspirated within the M1 middle cerebral artery segment. Case 1 demonstrates the first reported clinical application of this technique used in conjunction with stent retriever and direct aspiration through an intermediate catheter, resulting in modified thrombolysis in cerebral infarction (mTICI) score 3 recanalisation, and a 90-day modified Rankin Score of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Gadolinium deposition is widely believed to occur, but questions regarding accumulation pattern and permanence remain. We conducted a retrospective study of intracranial signal changes on monthly triple-dose contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations from the previously published Betaseron vs. Copaxone in Multiple Sclerosis With Triple-Dose Gadolinium and 3-Tesla MRI Endpoints Trial (N = 67) to characterize the dynamics of gadolinium deposition in several deep brain nuclei and track persistence versus washout of gadolinium deposition on long-term follow-up (LTFU) examinations (N = 28) obtained approximately 10 years after enrollment in the Betaseron vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNo aspect of neurointerventional practice has been associated with as longstanding contention and debate as to its effectiveness as has vertebroplasty (VP). Four blinded randomized controlled trials published since 2009 have demonstrated conflicting results regarding a conferred benefit in pain reduction and functional improvement for patients who undergo VP for osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures. Significant heterogeneity exists between each of these trials, which has resulted in difficulty for interventionalists and surgeons to translate the trial findings into routine clinical practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmyotroph Lateral Scler Frontotemporal Degener
November 2018
Objective: The clinical diagnosis of primary lateral sclerosis can only be made after upper motor neuron symptoms have progressed for several years without developing lower motor neuron signs. The goal of the study was to identify neuroimaging changes that occur early in primary lateral sclerosis, prior to clinical diagnosis.
Methods: MRI scans were obtained on 13 patients with adult-onset progressive spasticity for five years or less who were followed longitudinally to confirm a clinical diagnosis of primary lateral sclerosis.
Inhibitory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of the primary motor area (M1) impairs motor sequence-learning, but not basic motor function. It is unknown if this is specific for motor forms of procedural learning or a more general effect. To investigate, we tested the effect of M1-inhibition on the weather prediction task (WPT), a learning task with minimal motor learning component.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The goal of this study was to better understand the changes in tissue microstructure that underlie white matter diffusion changes in ALS patients.
Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging was carried out in postmortem brains of 4 ALS patients and two subjects without neurological disease on a 7 T MRI scanner using steady-state free precession sequences. Fractional anisotropy (FA) was measured in the genu, body, and splenium of the corpus callosum in formalin-fixed hemispheres.
Expansion mutations in the gene may cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), or mixtures of the two clinical phenotypes. Different imaging findings have been described for -associated diseases in comparison with sporadic patients with the same phenotypes, but it is uncertain whether different phenotypes have a common genotype-associated imaging signature. To address this question, 27 unrelated expansion mutation carriers (C9 +) with varied phenotypes, 28 age-matched healthy controls and 22 patients with sporadic ALS (sALS) underwent 3T MRI scanning and clinical phenotyping.
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