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Surgeons Cut a Giant Tumor Out of My Head. Is There a Better Way?
- xyst 2y agohttps://archive.ph/3axkV https://archive.ph/3axkV
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoBack in '96, I had a pretty serious craniotomy. Took me a couple of months to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, but I was pretty much 100% recovered, in five years. One of best days of my life, was when my neurosurgeon said "I never want to see you again." They did it the old-fashioned way. Scalpel and Black-and-Decker circular saw.
- adin8mon 2y agoA family member of mine had to go through something similar, the old-fashioned way. I've never felt more scared for someone else than on that day.
- Loudergood 2y agoBrain plasticity is amazing.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIs it actually a black and decker? It isn’t some sort of special FDA approved medical saw? Is that even a thing?
- bluefirebrand 2y agoWhat would the difference be in your mind? As long as the blade is suitable for cutting bone and it's all sterilized, what would make it medical grade over carpenter grade? My Dad was the manager of a tool store for decades. He has had a lot of knee problems and he has a funny story about his knee surgeon coming into the store looking for a drill bit to drill out a stripped screw. He jokingly asked if the stripped screw was in someone's knee, and sure enough it was.
- robertlagrant 2y ago> what would make it medical grade over carpenter grade? In my experience, about $50000.
- acchow 2y agoMy woodworking equipment has a certain amount of jitter and give. It seems to have precision to about 1-1.5mm. I imagine medical grade machine cutting would have higher precision?
- vasco 2y agoProbably, but when you're watching these surgeries as a layman for the first time it's surprising how much fumbling around they seem to do. I have a few pieces of metal inside me so took more of an interest at some point, and even those surgeons admit their job is mostly carpentry on hard mode.
- wbl 2y agoMy grandfather was an orthopod and an amateur carpenter. The skills really do transfer.
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- tomcam 2y agoWow. Genuinely grateful you got through it so well.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoSo am I. It was a ... tense ... time of my life.
- bearsnowstorm 2y agoA counterpoint on focused ultrasound for essential tremor - just because you don’t penetrate the brain with a physical object doesn’t mean you don’t have side effects - as usual, benefits come with risks https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2821256 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...
- vasco 2y agoThis article isn't accessible so it's hard to see what you mean. Do you have a link to the full thing? Found a similar previous one https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28716?af=R https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.100... where out of 10 patients, 7 had issues: > Tremor significantly improved in all patients. Seven experienced mild adverse effects, including 2 with transient gait impairment and a fall, 1 with dysarthria and dysphagia, and 1 with mild dysphagia persisting at 3 months. Also can't access the full pdf either though.
- melling 2y agoThe FDA approved histotripsy mentioned in the article to treat liver tumors is available at NYU Langone. https://nyulangone.org/news/nyu-langone-cancer-specialists-use-pioneering-histotripsy-technology-noninvasively-treat-liver-tumors https://nyulangone.org/news/nyu-langone-cancer-specialists-u...
- cen4 2y ago[flagged]
- meindnoch 2y agoYeah, a whole load of construction equipment, in your living room. Which keeps multiplying by itself, and gonna take up so much space that it squeezes you to death against the living room wall.
- qingcharles 2y agoYikes, this is a weird take.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIf we completely understood biology it would be possible to do this. That might be millennia away though.
- melling 2y agoEven if The Singularity isn’t Nearer, 1000 years seems like way too long https://youtu.be/xh2v5oC5Lx4?si=kd47S0TI8wLiYa-M https://youtu.be/xh2v5oC5Lx4?si=kd47S0TI8wLiYa-M
- simonh 2y agoIf we completely understood biology, we wouldn’t need to wait for a tumour to come along in order to take advantage of that knowledge. A tumour would still be a nuisance, they don’t bring along any more resources. OP is talking nonsense.
- ChainOfFools 2y agoExactly the sort of take I hope to find every time I browse HN. A thoughtful "what if" that prompts reflection on a topic in a fundamentally unique way, even if it doesn't readily suggest a resolution.
- 2y ago
- yarg 2y agoEither sonic or photonic attacks from every direction at once, resonating at the tumour site. You'll also need to bolster the immune system to aid in recovery.
- kuhewa 2y ago> You'll also need to bolster the immune system to aid in recovery. This eats the brain
- tomcam 2y agoHow?
- mschuster91 2y agoI guess they're referring to the brain (and, by extension, the eyes!) being an "immunoprivileged zone" [1]... the brain-blood-barrier makes a lot of "everyday" stuff for the rest of the body pretty complex affairs for everything CNS related. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_privilege
- namibj 2y agoYour link says the brain proper got the Pluto treatment.
- atlas_hugged 2y agoWait, what??? Where on earth did you hear that? Source?
- DiscourseFan 2y agohttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087469/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087469/
- kuhewa 2y ago
- rishabhjain 2y agoI wonder how is it different than radiosurgery? Machines like Cyberknife, Gammaknife also treat brain tumours in non invasive way
- suddenseizure 2y agoI wouldn't call radiation non invasive, it ages the surrounding brain tissue a lot. For people with faster growing tumors like GBM the tumor will usually kill them before the side effects of radiation hit. But for people with slower growing tumors like oligodendroglioma, the side effects of radiation can force them to quit their job and go on disability, years before they actually die of the cancer. The better we get at treating these tumors and extending patients' lives, the more important it will be to avoid radiation as long as possible to ensure that extra quantity of life also has quality.
- OJFord 2y agoIn medicine/surgery, 'invasive' is a bit of a term of art, meaning that implements physically enter the body. 'keyhole surgery' (a small incision with a scope and tiny tooling pushed through) for example is often described as 'minimally invasive'.
- FireBeyond 2y agoYes. Even placing stents during cardiac catheterization (PCIs or angioplasty) is 'minimally invasive' because typically access is achieved by the femoral artery and snaked up (the femoral comes "direct" from the heart, for all intents). Yes, you blow up vessels with a balloon and leave a metal sheath in them, but as you say, minimally invasive, because you didn't crack the chest to do it.
- pknomad 2y agoI didn't realize how aggressive GBM could be until watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSLPq010Q-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSLPq010Q-o That much growth in 4 months is eye watering. > The better we get at treating these tumors and extending patients' lives, the more important it will be to avoid radiation as long as possible to ensure that extra quantity of life also has quality. This is a good point.
- vsuperpower2021 2y agoarticle fails to load text partway through. why are websites so bad at doing this?
- Muromec 2y agoTo make sure you watch ads
- karmaniverous 2y ago[flagged]
- danparsonson 2y agoI don't know anything about your divorce so it didn't even cross my mind.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoShould have asked this question beforehand?
- vanderZwan 2y ago> The key is knowing exactly where to aim. While the MRI machine took readings, Elias ran a test at a low intensity to see if he could gently heat up the spot on Doby’s thalamus he was targeting. Satisfied with the result, he then proceeded to blast an area millimeters wide with 6,000 joules of focused sound energy for a few seconds. A graph on his monitor showed the temperature jumping to about 60C (140F). Everything around it stayed at a normal 37C. Other than a brief sensation of heat inside his head, Doby said he didn’t feel a thing. Elias repeated the process three more times, checking the tremor after each. By the fourth, it was gone. Leaving it at "knowing where to aim" is severely underselling the problem, because then the next step is how to aim. Back in 2003 when I still studied physics I attended a talk back by a Dutch biomedical researcher who worked on shock wave lithotripsy - a procedure where ultrasound is used to break kidney stones. So same idea as this, except kidney stone So what he pointed out was that the human body is not a medium of uniform density, so the way the sound waves propagate is hard to calculate. Worse, the human body tends to move, even when the patient is under anesthetics. Even if you sedate someone enough to lie perfectly still, the heartbeat means blood vessels grow and shrink, breathing causes miniscule motions that can throw off the ultrasound beams. Maybe this is specific to kidney stones though, maybe kidneys are just a lot more "floppy" organs and maybe kidney stones move a lot. Maybe the brain is a lot more "stable" in the skull. And I suppose the method of destruction is different (kidney stones need to be shattered by ultrasound waves, whereas this method uses heat), so that might also be an influence. I'm not being critical of this technology btw, just trying to point out that the engineering problems involved are likely a lot more interesting than that this article is suggesting. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotripsy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotripsy
- saas_sam 2y agoInteresting. Maybe part of the solution is better predicting and controlling the motion inside the human body. I could imagine using a method to guarantee a particular organ be at a certain place at a certain moment: perhaps by accelerating the body a certain way to shove the organ into a position for a moment. Or maybe by injecting microscopic machines to surround and hold an area still. Someone will figure it out.
- kelsey98765431 2y ago
- pknomad 2y agoI'm a bit confused on the use of word non-invasive in this context. I was under the impression that non-invasive meant no cutting of tissue. Even if ultrasound separated the cancerous tissue from the healthy tissue - how would the surgeons get it out of the head without cutting into the skull? I also thought some surgeons used diluted hydrogen peroxide irrigation for removing potential neoplastic cancerous tissues post excision?