A WOMAN who had brain surgery through an incision in her leg was ready to leave
hospital yesterday without stitches or so much as a headache only two days after her operation.
Surgeons treated potentially fatal abnormalities in the blood vessels of her brain by guiding tiny equipment through an artery in her groin up to her head, under local anaesthetic. Pauline Tones, 52, from Coventry, was the first patient to have surgery using a new £700,000 machine at Newcastle General Hospital.
She had four aneurysms - weak points on blood vessels in the brain which swell and
eventually burst, often killing the victim.
To treat one of them, doctors inserted a hollow needle into the femoral artery in her groin and pushed a catheter - a hollow tube - into the artery and threaded it through her heart, into the neck artery and up to the base of the brain.
Tiny platinum coils were pushed along the catheter to the site of the largest aneurysm where they were used to block off the 1.5 cm gap into the swelling.
Though it is technically possible to go in through the neck, it is more painful for the patient.
Dr Anil Gholkar, consultant neuroradiologist, said that patients would previously have had to have major brain surgery for the condition, with at least three weeks in hospital.
The new technique had been used for two years but Mrs Tones was the first patient to be treated with the new machine, which enabled faster, safer treatment, he said. The machine provides three-dimensional images of the brain 's blood vessels and can be turned through 360 degrees to pinpoint where the problem lies.
Radio-opaque dye injected via the catheter into the blood vessels of the brain indicates through X-ray pictures where the aneurysm lies so that doctors can direct the platinum coils to the right spot. Mrs Tones, a grandmother, said yesterday that she felt a little sleepy after her operation on Monday but she had no pain or stitches.
She said: "The first sign that I had aneurysms was at the beginning of the year when my sight started to blur. I thought I needed new glasses but then I lost all colour vision too. It was then that doctors realised what was the matter - it was the biggest of the aneurysms pushing against nerves at the back of my eye."
Dr Gholkar said Mrs Tones was able to go home but she would have to return for treatment on the three remaining aneurysms. The technique used on Mrs Tones - angiography - is a form of keyhole surgery and, with local anaesthetic, enables patients to recover far quicker than with traditional surgery.
The speed of diagnosis is vital in cases of sub-arachnoid haemorrhages. In Mrs Tones's case, it almost certainly saved her life.
