Special MRI Guides Baby’s Brain Surgery

Daily News

Little Brian Sherman of Queens underwent major brain surgery yesterday, and thanks to revolutionary new high-tech equipment, doctors hardly had to touch his brain at all.

Born in August with hydrocephalus - fluid on the brain - the 5-month-old underwent 3 1/2 hours of surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center's Singer Division to kill cysts that had grown on his brain.

"We broke up a lot of the cysts," said Dr. Rick Abbott, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Manhattan hospital. "He is awake, looks comfortable and all the nurses are looking at him. He really is a cute baby."

Abbott's surgical team performed the delicate operation using a new $1 million magnetic resonance imaging machine that he said made "a road map" of the boy's brain for them to follow.

With Odin Medical Technologies' new PoleStar N-10 intra-operative MRI machine, "I can see where I'm going," Abbott said. Using conventional equipment, doctors generally take an MRI before surgery and rely on "dead reckoning" during the operation, he said.

Brian's mother, Renita Thompson, 28, admitted the operation was scary but said afterward, "It went great. He's fine. I felt so relieved and glad when I saw him."

The boy's dad, Brian Sherman Sr., 35, agreed. "A lot of pressure came off when we saw him again," he said.

So successful was the surgery that Brian, who weighs 19 pounds, could go home with his parents to Ridgewood, Queens, as early as today.

Along with the MRI, Abbott used fiber optic viewing instruments manipulated through a 3/8-inch hole drilled in the left side of the boy's skull. That eliminated the need to remove a large piece of skull to operate.

Weaker magnetic pull

Conventional MRIs use large magnets to make precise images of the inside of the body. The machines are so big, they must be housed in large rooms separate from the operating rooms. The PoleStar is small enough to fit under an operating table.

The strong magnetic pull of a conventional MRI machine can send any nearby metal objects flying through the air. The new machine's magnetic field is weaker, allowing it to be used safely - with special titanium instruments - in an operating room.

Brian is the youngest of 20 patients Beth Israel has treated for cysts, tumors and biopsies using the new machine.

The potentially harmful cysts developed after an infection flared in the spot where a shunt, or tube, had been placed in the boy's brain at another hospital to drain fluid.