CHICAGO (WBBM) - A Chicago neurosurgeon has become the first in the Midwest to use a laser for a bypass operation affecting the brain. This is equivalent to a now-common coronary bypass only it involves vessels feeding the brain instead of the heart.
WBBM's John Cody reports.
Dr. Fady Charbel says the Excimer laser allows the surgeon to connect the graft blood vessel into the carotid artery without interrupting the flow of blood to the brain.
Dr. Tipu Aziz at Oxford University's hospital in Britain says "this form of surgery will only be relevant to a select few patients."
But Doctor Charbel at the University of Illinois at Chicago says this procedure may find use in efforts like stroke prevention and coronary bypass surgery.
A Dutch surgeon developed the procedure over 20 years ago and it's been done, though not widely, in Britain and other European Union countries.
Dr. Charbel couldn't just clip off the aneurysm in his patients' carotid arteries because it was too big and complex.
So he hooked a leg vein graft onto a stretch of artery, then stuck the laser into the graft tube and punched a hole through into the good artery, sealing both together while the blood was still flowing.
Dr. Charbel, neurosurgury chief at UIC, said he practiced the operation six times the weekend before he actually did it. For practice he used arteries of rabbits saved for him at a Chicago butcher shop.
Dr. Charbel said the patient awakened from her operation in good condition with a minor speech problem but says he's hoping for a full recovery.
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