New, minimally invasive epilepsy surgery is changing lives
The Alfred is the first hospital in Victoria and the second in Australia to offer a new and highly effective kind of brain surgery to treat previously ‘inoperable’ drug-resistant epilepsy.
Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) is a minimally invasive, highly targeted surgery using laser technology guided by MRI to destroy lesions that cause epilepsy.
The new technology allows surgeons to access deeper parts of the brain that were previously considered too dangerous to reach.
As a result of LITT, lesions near parts of the brain that play a key role in critical functions – such as memory or cognition – can be ablated.
A laser fibre is inserted with pinpoint precision into a patient’s brain, before they are carefully placed in an MRI scanner.
The MRI then feeds real time information on the brain and laser’s temperature.
“We can directly visualise in real time ourselves lesioning and destroying the part of the brain that causes the epilepsy,” Neurosurgeon and Head of Epilepsy Surgery at Alfred Health Mathew Gutman said.
“It allows us to access really deep areas of the brain safely and then ablate them, and then send the person home the next day.”
It’s these aspects of the procedure that have Alfred Health’s Director of Epilepsy Associate Professor Andrew Neal describing LITT as a “game changer for patients”.
“Since it became available in the United States five to 10 years ago, we have seen LITT changing the landscape of epilepsy surgery for the better,” A/Prof Neal said.
“It’s now providing a broader range of patients with drug resistant epilepsy access to safer epilepsy surgery.”
Music teacher Dawn Kenny, 71, is the latest patient to be discharged from hospital a day after her LITT procedure and said everyone involved in her care had been, “absolutely brilliant”.
"It would be amazing, absolutely amazing to think I don’t have to have this cloud over my life all the time,” Dawn said.
Director of Alfred Brain Professor Terence O’Brien said support from the Lifesaving Equipment Fund was “essential” in allowing The Alfred to start offering the procedure.
“It funded more than half of the new equipment required for this. Without these donations, we would have not been able to implement LITT here at this time,” Professor O’Brien said.
So far, eight successful procedures have been completed and the waitlist is growing.
“At the moment we’re performing one LITT procedure every month, but our hope is to expand the program to meet the needs of anyone who could benefit,” Professor O’Brien said.
