Canadian physicians have made a scientific breakthrough
In January, a medical team completed research and performed the surgery. The new method promises to heal terminally ill children.
Doctors and researchers at Sunnybrook and SickKids Hospitals in Toronto, Canada, have completed the world's first clinical trial of a new method to treat brain cancer in children. They use MRI-guided ultrasound to deliver chemotherapy to a malignant and inoperable brainstem tumor.
Currently, the average life expectancy of patients after diagnosis is less than a year. This disease is considered the second most common malignant tumor in the brain in children. In most cases, it affects children from 5 to 7 years of age.
The main symptoms are dizziness, double vision, weakness of facial muscles, and impaired coordination. Children with this diagnosis live from 6 to 18 months, even if they receive radiation therapy.
The difficulty is that a malignant tumor cannot be reached and under no circumstances can the brain stem be surgically interfered with. And chemotherapy drugs can't get there because of the barrier that's there.
So the doctors decided to try ultrasound waves and images to get the medicine to the right parts of the head.
The first surgery with this method was performed on a 5-year-old patient. And the surgery was successful: the chemotherapy really got to her brain. Two hours after the procedure, she returned to the intensive care unit and joked.
Each patient must undergo three treatments at intervals of 4 to 6 weeks. To date, 10 patients are scheduled to be treated with the new method.
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