Breakthrough Brain Surgery

Reported August 2005

PITTSBURGH (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Imagine checking into the hospital for brain surgery on a Wednesday and being home to enjoy your weekend with no scars or side effects. High-tech medicine is making that all possible, and the key to its success is as plain as the nose on your face.

Within just two days of her surgery, Lori Cimino was living a normal life with no signs of the tumor that threatened her optic nerve. The key to her quick recovery was the unusual way doctors got into her brain.

Neurosurgeons guided the telescope, called an endoscope, through the nose and directly into Lori's tumor. Then, with tiny surgical instruments attached to the scope, they removed the tumor the same way they went in.

"We go into the center of a tumor and take it out in small little pieces and take these little pieces out through the nose one at a time," otorhinolaryngologist Carl Snyderman, M.D., of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, tells Ivanhoe.

For a hundred years, surgeons have been accessing the brain through the nose, but it was just recently that they succeeded in removing a tumor in a minimally invasive way.

Neurosurgeon Amin Kassam, M.D., also of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says, "Because we don't have to disarticulate the face and the bones to get there, it allows for these patients to be much more comfortable."

Cimino got rid of her tumor but kept her appearance, something almost impossible had she relied on the old methods of brain surgery. She says, "Pretty much I would be disfigured. They'd cut into my skull. I'd have staples ... My head would be shaved." She is one of 400 successful operations performed by the doctors at the University of Pittsburgh, a success that will allow her to continue to enjoy the beauty around her everyday.

Doctors caution this surgery is not for everyone ... Some tumors are too hard to reach or are too large to be removed through the nose.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Department of Neurological Surgery
UPMC Presbyterian, Suite B-400
200 Lothrop Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
(412) 647-3685
(412) 647-0989
neuroinfo@upmc.edu


Click here to watch the video.

Your children's teeth may reveal their risk for sleeping problems.

Protecting heads on and off the football field.

Have brain surgery on Monday, be home the next day.

Cleaning up contaminated soil that could be in your backyard.

Easier, safer and less-expensive surgeries to help people breathe easier.

Driving and talking on your cell phone is dangerous, even if you think you are the exception.

Detecting your risk for a heart attack before the pain begins.

Warning when your food or medicine has been tampered with.

Helping some transplant patients live longer, healthier lives.

Creating butterfly gardens to help preserve monarch butterflies.

Cloning trees to get the best fruit possible.

Predicting a heart attack with 95-percent accuracy.