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.”
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”.
Director of Alfred Brain Professor Terence O’Brien said despite it being only recently available, LITT is already drawing interest.
“Our surgical teams have now completed over eight successful procedures and our waitlist is growing,” Professor O’Brien said.
