An amazing cure!

I'm astonished to read that a surgical version of superglue may be one answer to aneurisms. The Wilford Hall Medical Center at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, TX, reports:

Maj. (Dr.) Christopher Koebbe, a neurosurgeon assigned to the 59th Surgical Specialties Squadron here, recently performed a unique procedure to treat a patient's aneurysm. Using a special liquid, he was able to cure his patient without having to resort to surgery.

Col. Amy Bechtold, a criminal trial judge stationed at Randolph AFB, Texas, was suffering with a ringing in her ears. Upon examination, her doctors discovered she had a cerebral aneurysm.

. . .

For Colonel Bechtold's aneurysm, Dr. Koebbe was able to use a rather new procedure, called endovascular aneurysm repair.

"Endovascular aneurysm repair involves inserting a catheter into an artery in the groin area and navigating it up into the brain cavity and inserting liquid into the aneurysm," Dr. Koebbe explained. "It's a special kind of glue that fills the void in the aneurysm and prevents bleeding and rupture."

This "glue," a liquid embolic system, solidifies when it hits the blood, creating a permanent cure.

"When Dr. Koebbe told me about the endovascular procedure it sounded much better than the old fashioned way where someone is poking around in your brain externally," Colonel Bechtold said.

Dr. Koebbe performed the endovascular aneurysm repair on May 31 at Brooke Army Medical Center, Ft. Sam Houston, Texas. Instead of undergoing invasive brain surgery, Colonel Bechtold's procedure took one hour, involving a one-centimeter incision, and her hospital stay was only one day.

There's more at the link. Here's a CBS news report about the procedure.

That fascinates me! To think of threading a tube up the blood vessels from the leg all the way to the brain, then filling an aneurism with superglue . . . yea, verily, my mind doth boggle!

Peter