The procedure: drill six burr holes (3 in each hemisphere) into the brain of a 5 year old child. Via 6 ultra thin glass catheters, slowly administer a vector that will hopefully find its way into nucleated grey matter of the child and kick-off the production a critical enzyme that is missing, in hopes that the child will not die of a fatal neurodenerative disease in a few years. The vector in this case is a common non-pathogenic (as far as we know) virus that has been stripped of its own DNA, and piggy-backed with non-mutated DNA that contains the gene coding for this missing enzyme. Since the virus is a retrovirus, once it enters a cell nucleus, it begins altering the cell's own DNA with what it is carrying, in this case, the non-mutated genes (same methods as HIV).
The 6 incisions were circular and pretty small, and I would guess the penetration was about 1 cm, because the catheter infusion was set at two different depths: 2 cm and then 1.5 cm. The catheters were only inserted into the outer layer of the brain proper.
As for bone removed, yes, the drilling removed some bone, which they did not keep (sometimes they do to use it later in the surgery). The suturing process involved some kind of compound that filled the holes and blended with surrounding bone, and the skin/tissue was stiched up with regular nylon. I plan on asking more about this compound next time I go in because it acted so quickly - I was a bit mesmerized by everything that I forgot to ask a lot of questions. I don't know if it is related to the artificial bone you mention, but that sounds pretty fascinating indeed.
And yes, the child was under general anesthesia. I would sure as hell hope that any brain surgery would involve at least that!
I didn't realize they were already using recombinant DNA to administer missing protein for a five year old kid's brain. Shit, science moves quickly these days...Last I checked, it was still experimental. in lab mice
The 6 incisions were circular and pretty small, and I would guess the penetration was about 1 cm, because the catheter infusion was set at two different depths: 2 cm and then 1.5 cm. The catheters were only inserted into the outer layer of the brain proper.
As for bone removed, yes, the drilling removed some bone, which they did not keep (sometimes they do to use it later in the surgery). The suturing process involved some kind of compound that filled the holes and blended with surrounding bone, and the skin/tissue was stiched up with regular nylon. I plan on asking more about this compound next time I go in because it acted so quickly - I was a bit mesmerized by everything that I forgot to ask a lot of questions. I don't know if it is related to the artificial bone you mention, but that sounds pretty fascinating indeed.
And yes, the child was under general anesthesia. I would sure as hell hope that any brain surgery would involve at least that!
Thanks for asking :)
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