World renowned epileptologist Dr. Helen Cross and two of her colleagues visited Texas Children’s July 9 and July 10 to get more information on the Medtronic Visualase system, which uses real-time MRI-guided thermal imaging and laser technology to destroy lesions in the brain that cause epilepsy and uncontrollable seizures.
This product is not available in Europe, therefore Cross and the other clinicians from Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children are exploring the feasibility of sending some of their patients to Texas Children’s Hospital for treatment.
Cross and Drs. Sophia Varadkar and Martin Tisdall met with representatives from the International Office and later joined neurosurgeon Dr. Daniel Curry and neurologists Drs. Angus Wilfong, Michael Quach and Anne Anderson for a tour of the Magnetoencephalography Lab at the Pavilion for Women, the 12-bed epilepsy monitoring unit and the Blue Bird Clinic for Pediatric Neurology and Neurosurgery. The group also donned scrubs and observed a visualase laser ablation case with Curry and Wilfong, who performed the first of such procedures at Texas Children’s four years ago.
The surgery is performed by first mapping the area of the brain where the lesion is located using magnetic resonance imaging. The catheter is inserted through the skull in the operating room and then the patient is transferred to an MRI unit where the ablation of the lesion is performed. The MRI confirms probe placement in the target, and the magnetic resonance thermal imaging allows the surgeon to see the ablation of the lesion by the laser heat as it happens with an automatic feedback system that shuts the laser off when the heat approaches nearby critical brain structures.
“While we have been successful in curing epilepsy through open cranial surgery for quite some time, the benefits of this new approach in reducing risk and invasiveness while providing instant therapeutic has opened the door for more epilepsy patients to see surgery as a viable option,” Curry said. “We were more than happy to share this information with Helen and her team and look forward to working with them and their patients in the near future.”