A team of engineers and physicians has developed a steerable catheter that for the first time will give neurosurgeons the ability to steer the device in any direction they want while navigating the brain’s arteries and blood vessels. The device was inspired by nature, specifically insect legs and flagella–tail-like structures that allow microscopic organisms such as bacteria to swim.
The team from the University of California San Diego describes the breakthrough in the Aug. 18 issue of Science Robotics.
The steerable catheter was successfully tested in pigs at the Center for the Future of Surgery at UC San Diego.
Approximately one in 50 people in the United States has an unruptured intracranial aneurysm–a thin-walled, blister-like lesion on a cerebral artery that is prone to rupture. These kinds of lesions affect over 160 million people worldwide, half of them under the age of 50. Of patients that suffer ruptured aneurysms, more than half die. Half of the survivors experience long-term disabilities. Studies show that a quarter of cases cannot be operated on because of how difficult the aneurysms are to reach.
