Word: aneurysm
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With electrodes of steel, the electro-coagulation method offers the advantage of forming a clot quickly. This constitutes a sort of neurosurgical first aid for the aneurysm patient, enough to tide him over the first and most dangerous days after a hemorrhage. But clots formed in this way are apt not to be permanent, whereas if a piece of copper is implanted in the aneurysm and left there for a week, without an electric current, it forms a more permanent clot. So Dr. Mullan's team is now combining the two methods: forming a quick clot by electricity...
...restore full circulation to the brain when there is critical narrowing in an accessible artery in the neck. His colleague, Dr. Cooley, did the first operation to remove an aneurysm (a thin, ballooned-out section) from the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber. He tried putting a patient on the heart-lung machine two years ago while he removed a "pulmonary embolism," a usually fatal blood clot in the pulmonary artery. Now. with three successes logged, Cooley believes the procedure should be made generally available, with disposable oxygen kits ready in all major hospitals...
Hair of the Hog. Even getting at the aneurysm, which is nearly always at the base of the brain in the arterial traffic rotary ("circle of Willis"), is a major operation. It involves sawing through and lifting a flap of skull and moving the brain out of the way. The commonest method of treatment has been to tie off the aneurysm at its stem with a tiny silver clip, or close the artery with clips on each side of the stem. Dr. Gallagher was not satisfied with these methods because merely touching the aneurysm to attach a clip might cause...
Dangerous Leak. Last June Dr. Gallagher operated on a man of 40 with a dangerously leaking aneurysm. After opening the patient's skull, he fired a hog's hair into the aneurysm which was ten times as big across as its parent artery. Within 15 minutes, clotting had set in and the aneurysm was shrinking. Dr. Gallagher fired in five more hairs. By the time he finished closing the patient's skull, the aneurysm was less than one-third its original size. The patient later died of causes unrelated to the operation. But within a month, Gallagher...
Machinist Hagemeyer jumped at the chance to make the lifesaving gun because his own son died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 32. Other neurosurgeons have not yet had a chance to try the new technique because Dr. Gallagher's gun is the only one in existence. But he has already had requests for hair guns from interested colleagues...