Equipment training: Brain surgery without opening skull

Neuro angiography machine at Lahore General Hospital the first of its kind in any public hospital in the country.

LAHORE: The installation of a state-of-the-art neuro angiography machine at the Lahore General Hospital (LGH) has made possible the treatment and repairing of blood vessels in the brain without opening the skull. This machine was introduced by experts at a two-day training workshop that concluded at the LGH on Sunday.

The medical experts talked about how doctors previously needed to perform lengthy operations, and how a long time was required for healing. During the workshop, Dr Peter Keston, a renowned neuro radiologist from England, performed a procedure using the neuro angiography machine and demonstrated the procedure for the local doctors.

Dr Tariq Salahuddin, the LGH principal, said that the cost of the neuro angiography machine installed at the LGH was Rs200 million. He said that it was first machine of its kind in any public hospital in the country.

He said that a three-dimensional cerebral angiography done through the machine would enable health professionals to diagnose and treat clots, tumors and hemorrhages with a minimum of radiation exposure, thus improving pre-and-post -operative care.

He hoped that the patients suffering from strokes due to blood clots in the brain vessels would benefit from it with timely detection and dissolution of the clots.

Dr Anjum Habib Vohra, the LGH Neuro Radiology Department head, Dr Umair Rasheed, Dr Shehzad Kareem, LGH medical superintendent Dr Salahuddin Khan and other doctors from different hospitals including Shaikh Zayed Hospital, Shaukat Khanum Hospital also attended the workshop.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2011.