New sensor to stop progress of brain damage in head injury patients скачать в хорошем качестве

New sensor to stop progress of brain damage in head injury patients

(14 Oct 2014) LEAD IN: A sensor giving doctors real time information about what's happening in the brains of their most severely injured patients has being developed by British scientists. The brain sensor is still at the stage of being a prototype, but doctors say it's already been used on patients who've suffered serious traumas. STORY-LINE: The first five days after a serious brain injury are absolutely vital. It's during this period that trauma patients are likely suffer what's become known as a 'brain tsunami'. This event can massively increase the damage from the original area of impact to a much wider surface of the brain. When the brain has been damaged by a massive blow, electrical signals can go haywire. As electrical signals short circuit more areas of the brain are damaged and die. This bolt could be the future of intensive care. It may not look as impressive as some of the other kit here, but doctors here at Kings College Hospital believe the instrument attached to the head of this 79 year old man could radically improve the outcomes of brain injury patients. Various forms of sensors have been used in hospitals for several years. So what makes this one different? According to doctors here, this prototype doesn't just tell staff about pressure in the brain, but it reveals details of small chemical changes in the brain and it sends out the information in real time. The data from the sensors is sent to a computer and immediately converted to easily understood information on a monitor. Green is good, any read out in red is an alert that something is disturbing the sophisticated balance of the brain. It means staff in packed intensive care wards can see at a glance whether the patient is deteriorating. The sensor is the work of Professor Martyn Boutelle, a bioengineer and chemist at Imperial College London. Boutelle explains: "So what I've got here is the cranial access bolt and it's the key thing for getting the information out of the patient's brain. As you can see this goes into the scull and then we have here the different types of sensors that measure brain chemicals, brain pressure, brain oxygen that go into the brain. Those cables come through the bolt outside and then that allows us to take the signals and plug them into our instrument and we're recording here levels of glucose that's sugar lactate and the levels of potassium within the patients brain. Here are the traces for the brain glucose the brain lactate and the brain potassium. These are the neurochemical changes we will record in the brain." Neurosurgeon Professor Anthony Strong is overseeing the use of the brain sensor at Kings College as well as being a leading member of a group of Europe wide surgeons researching the impact of serious brain injuries and what can be done to reduce the long term effects. Strong believes anything that gives staff in our busy intensive care wards an early warning of something going wrong is vitally important to the long term health of the patient. He says: "Any injury where the scull is suddenly brought to a halt, the brain will push within the inside of the scull and that can result in bruising in different parts of the brain particularly the frontal lobe and the temple lobe here. Those are the most common pattens of sights of contusion or bruising of the brain." As soon as the electrical signals in the brain start short circuiting medical staff can immediately start to investigate the cause before the damage spreads. The surgeons in this theatre are operating on the brain of a 61 year old woman. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...