Professor Suh Dae-chul at the Neuro Intervention Clinic of Asan Medical Center (AMC) said Wednesday that his team has successfully treated a 78-year-old female multi intracranial aneurysms patient with single coil embolization.

Coil embolization is used to prevent blood vessels in the brain from enlarging by inserting a catheter into the femoral artery in the patient's thigh to fill the coil inside the aneurysm and block the blood flow to the cerebral aneurysm. One out of every five patients with cerebral aneurysms is diagnosed to have multiple swollen arteries. These patients need treatment as soon as possible due to the high probability that the blood vessels can rupture and cause bleeding in the brain.

When a patient has multiple intracranial aneurysms, several operations can be required for the treatment depending on the locations of the enlarged artery. However, elderly patients have had difficulties receiving repeated surgical procedures because of their health condition.

The pictures compare magnetic resonance angiography images of a patient with multiple intracranial aneurysms before (upper) and after the surgical procedure.

Professor Suh’s team has found a way to cure multiple aneurysms in the brain with one coil embolization method thanks to accumulated know-how from an average of 280 operations a year.

The research team diagnosed a 78-year-old female who visited the medical center due to frequent headaches and found her to have four aneurysms in her brain. As the entry of her inflated cerebral artery was relatively wide, there was a risk that the inserted coil could escape during the coil embolization surgery. Although the situation was necessary to insert a stent and close the entrance, Suh's team operated with two micro-catheters to avoid using the stent.

They used one catheter to support the entrance of the cerebral aneurysm to prevent the coil from coming out, and the other one, to insert the coil.

Although the team faced difficulty in inserting the coil accurately because the patient suffered from high blood pressure, which caused worsened deformation and reduced elasticity of blood vessels, it could insert the coil by modifying the length and direction of the fine catheter and conducting a three-dimensional cerebral angiography.

The research team cured three aneurysms of the patients and untouched the fourth to watch for progress as the size did not seem to be big enough to cause a rupture.

The patient left the hospital the following day after recovering to a point where she could perform daily life with no side effects.

"Elder patients often have a particularly weak vascular wall and physical weakness, making it difficult to perform multiple procedures,” Professor Suh said. “This case is meaningful in that we could quickly remove multiple intracranial aneurysms in an older patient with a single coil embolization method to reduce the risk of leading to cerebral hemorrhage."

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