Good news for premature babies: Pioneering technique washes brain
Last updated 3/9/2010 7:06:39 PM
Good news for premature babies thanks to new brain washing technique
A pioneering technique could reduce disability in premature babies with serious brain haemorrhage by washing the brain to remove toxins.
One of the most feared complications of being born very early is bleeding into the ventricles in the centre of the brain. A large haemorrhage usually injures the developing brain with consequent cerebral palsy and serious learning difficulties in several hundred children each year in the UK.
In about half of the children, fluid builds up inside the brain causing the brain and head to expand excessively. This condition is called ‘hydrocephalus'.
Andrew Whitelaw, from the University of Bristol, and Ian Pople, paediatric neurosurgeon at North Bristol NHS Trust, have pioneered a technique by which the inside of the brain is "washed out" to remove the toxic substances.
In the tests, if a premature baby was shown by repeated ultrasound scans to have had a large haemorrhage and then expanded ventricles, it was anaesthetised and two tubes were inserted into the ventricles in the brain. One tube was used to continuously drain out the cola-coloured fluid while the other tube was used to let clear fluid flow in. The pressure in the brain was measured continuously and more fluid was drained out than flowed in so the brain slowly decompressed.When the fluid draining out cleared, the two tubes were removed.
Until now, no treatment in these premature babies has been shown to reduce disability, or improve any aspect of health. The standard approach has been to repeatedly insert needles into the spine or head to remove fluid until, after several months, a permanent surgical "shunt" drains fluid from the brain to the abdomen.
Ian Pople said: "This is the first time that any treatment anywhere in the world has been shown to benefit these very vulnerable babies."
Isaac Walker-Cox was one of the first babies to have the pioneering ‘brain-washing' treatment following a brain haemorrhage after being born 13 weeks early at Southmead Hospital in Bristol.
He is now a happy nine-year-old who loves school and playing on his computer but in 2000 his parents Rebekah and Steven Walker-Cox, from Yate, South Gloucestershire, made the brave decision to allow doctors to carry out the revolutionary treatment on their fragile son to wash out toxic fluids that were inflating his brain.
Mrs Walker-Cox, 36, said: "We were told after the haemorrhage that Isaac may not make it through the night, that he had one per cent survival rate."When Professor Whitelaw told us about the research trial, we thought we didn't have anything to lose. We just kept watching the liquid go through the pump day after day, just waiting to see if it worked."
Isaac now has mild paralysis on the left side of his body caused by the haemorrhage but he doesn't let it hold him back. Mrs Walker-Cox said: "We were told Isaac may not be able to walk, and we didn't think he would be able to go to a mainstream school because we expected he would have a learning disability. But mentally he has no problems at all, he has an above average reading age and he is very good with computers. He just gets on with life and is an outgoing, happy little boy."
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