Ten out of ten is darn successful in my book of great feats! Ten pins down is a strike. Ten questions correctly answered, out of ten questions asked, is an A-plus, 100%. And ten correctly chosen numbers on a Power-ball Card could absolutely mean that you are a big big BIG winner!!
Now…how about if I told you that ten(10) people, out of ten(10) people, were the successful recipients of a brain “operation” that did NOT require skull-sawing, or knife-wielding by the doctor?? An accomplishment worth writing about. So…if I may have a drum-roll please… I will tell you the scoop as to exactly what happened at a Zurich hospital this month.
HIFU!!! Swiss doctors performed the worlds first NON-invasive brain surgery(why it is still called surgery is another topic!) with the use of high-intensity focused ultrasound, HIFU!!
ALL ten(10) of these patients where awake during the procedure…NO anesthesia…No blood…NO recovery time…NO hospital stay…NO chance of infection…NO cutting or sawing through the skull. WOW!!! And, ALL of the treatment interventions where 100% successful. Now, you can throw the celebration confetti…yippeee!
HIFU has been implemented with terrific results for uterine fibroids (check out my before and after pictures) and for tumors of the prostate gland. Soooo, why is this so exciting?? Because, never before have radiologists been able to pass through the skull to get to the brain.You see, the skull heats up because the bone absorbs the ultrasound waves.
Holy-moly, so how in tar-nation did the doctors overcome this “bone” obstacle? Well, the team of doctors created a helmet-like hemisphere with 1,024 tranduces, which can each be individually set, beaming separately into the skull. Each beaming session lasts 20 seconds with minute breaks in between, and increasing the temperature step by step.
As I type this remarkable information into WordPress, i feel so…uh, so 22nd Century! THIS is the future, right here and now! Of course, this procedure is in its very very infancy stage…but even so, here is the list of diseases and conditions which could be treated safely and effectively with HIFU. Parkinson’s…Alzheimer’s…Epilepsy…Stroke…Brain tumour. Amazing! All very major health problems that originate in the brain.
My crystal ball perspective of a HIFU-future, is one that, not only will hysterectomy seem barbaric and so very old-school-19th-Century, ALL surgeries will eventually become obsolete. This future vision of an operating room without saws or knives, would truly be a marvelous achievement, indeed!!
Hey, that means no more scenes in movies that have doctors barking orders to a nurse “scalpel…scalpel, nurse!” No way! Now the operating lingo would go something like this…” beam 1, beam 2…nurse, beam 3.” Don’t ya just love it?!!!?
