Concussions are a common occurrence on the football field. Commissioning their own studies, the NFL has been actively supporting Alzheimer’s and dementia research and a new study by the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center shows promise in helping those who suffer brain damage with an innovative new treatment.
Therapeutic hypothermia is a medical treatment that lowers a patient’s temperature to reduce damage to tissue. A new technique being studied, called the endovascular intra-arterial cooling method, preserves the injured portion of the brain and minimizes damage.The damaged tissue is rapidly cooled while the rest of the brain and body remain at normal temperature.
Lead director of Neurosurgery Research, Mark Preul, MD, says, “The ability to cool a specific region of the brain allows us to protect the tissue and avoid risk of damage to other organs that can occur with the whole body hypothermia. This work is targeted currently at severe injuries to the brain like massive strokes or trauma, but it also means we could be able to offer a less invasive and specific approach to saving brain tissue. We’re working to develop ways to be more proactive about treating brain injuries like sports concussions that make have been under-treated in the past.”
Link:
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/171017.php
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.