Thursday 2 November 2017

Neuronavigated TMS in Iceland

2nd of November 2017



After 11 months since the first awake craniotomy was performed in Iceland, medical and technical staff from Neurosurgery Department and Clinical Neurophysiology Unit of the Icelandic National  University Hospital #Landspitali started new testing protocol for the patients with lesions located in eloquent areas of the brain.  
The neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (neuronavigated-TMS) was initiated with a pilot study of a healthy subject on 1st of November 2017 to find motor "hot-spots" and "speech area" (by inducing the speech arrest) in total relaxation and safety.  
When the team will perform the test in patients, the functional areas will be saved with Talairach space, a 3-dimensional coordinate system of the brain structures, into the same neuronavigation system used by neurosurgeons in the operating room with the aim to avoid their damage during the surgical procedures.
On 13th of July 2017 the team tried this set-up on a phantom head in the operating room theater (here). 
Many thanks to Dr Ingvar Hákon Ólafsson (Neurosurgery Department) for his interest and collaboration, to Aron Dalin Jónasson (TMS Clinical Neurophysiology Unit technician) to support the MRI procedure and the pilot noninvasive TMS neuronavigation, Ágúst H. Guðmundsson (Intermedica & Medtronic) and to all Neurophysiology Unit medical and technical staff.












  





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