HSC seeks support for life-changing neurosurgical microscope

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2019 (2530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A $1-million neurosurgical microscope gave Lillian Moore her life back last fall, and took nothing away except the cluster of blood vessels in her brain causing debilitating seizures.

Moore, 16, was playing the piano Thursday to welcome guests at a news conference at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre — an activity she is able to do because Dr. Demitre Serletis was able to remove the cavernoma without impacting any other brain tissue.

“I wasn’t (as) afraid as I thought I would be of it and I think that was mostly because of the (medical) team… They made me know that I was safe and I felt safe throughout,” said Lillian, a Grade 11 student at Beaver Brae High School in Kenora, Ont. She said she was home three days after the surgery.

“I went back to school the next week, and I’ve been playing my piano and cheerleading and hanging out with my friends. I’m just so thankful for all of it,” Lillian said.

“I want people to know how their donations really do go directly to help people.”

The surgery was done through the Children’s Hospital pediatric neurosurgery program at HSC, which has the only Zeiss Kinevo 900 neurosurgical visualization system in Canada. (A children’s hospital in Texas has the only other in North America.)

Donations are needed to cover $200,000 outstanding on the cost of the microscope, purchased about two years ago by the Children’s Hospital. It has been used in about 50 pediatric surgeries and some adult surgeries to treat brain tumours, epilepsy, hydrocephalus, traumatic injuries, vascular disorders such as aneurysms and spinal cord pathologies.

“It’s a game changer,” Serletis, a neurosurgeon, researcher and director of epilepsy surgery, said of the Zeiss Kinevo 900’s magnification, lighting, electronics and robotics technology.

It has hands-free adjustments using a foot pedal or mouth piece, so surgeons do not have to put down instruments and their hands can stay fully in the field.

“This makes surgery safer, more efficient and faster as well,” Serletis said. “The target points of the operation can be saved so that with the flip of a foot pedal, the microscope can come back to a critical part of the operation itself instantly.

“There’s various light filters that can be used to visualize brain tumours that will literally fluoresce or glow against the background of the normal brain tissue. That is critical because sometimes you just can’t very easily tell the difference. It makes removal of deep brain tumours safer, quicker and you can avoid critical structures.”

Dean Schinkel, chairman of the Children’s Hospital Foundation board of directors, said the foundation is grateful for its donors so far “to help make miracles happen,” but more help is needed.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca