This Just In: Noninvasive Brain Surgery

I had that procedure done on kidney stones many years ago....worked like a charm, though it was very expensive like 17k...

Makes me appreciate our National Health Service in the UK, it has many faults but I would be able to agree to that sort of procedure without worrying about how I was going to pay for it.

Well you pay for it one way or the other, my insurance covered it completely, but I still have to pay for the insurance...

Kinda sucks, when you can only deduct medical expenses if more then 10% of your income.

Very true, in the UK the cost is spread across the whole working population & no one is going to say "sorry, that's not covered". Currently, I'm being considered for a replacement knee joint, privately that would cost around £12k but I will pay nothing for the op., the consultation & the medication. This would apply to anybody, whether working, retired or unemployed.

That uses much higher energy than this proposed method. It destroys the stone by breaking it up. I think that takes far more power to do this.

You did not have this procedure to treat your kidney stones. Shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is a completely different procedure than this form of neurosurgery. The two methods both transfer energy into the body via acoustic coupling but that is the only common factor.

How does it work on blondes?

Makes me wonder what a nefarious government or NGA could do with a very high powered beam(s).

"Paranoid?

Sure I am...;Or maybe I am just perspicacious?

I just wish I could get a consensus among all of the voices I hear."

researchers are constantly discovering things about the brain, that point to different causes.

the latest, I’ve just read is dementia not to be confused with Alzheimer's. While it was believed that the cause was plaque buildup, it looks like the cause is a crystal buildup in the hippocampus area.

This link is rather old from 2013… so, not quite new. The one that o read last week, had more detailed updates, where it stated it had crystal build up.

About twenty three years ago, I had an analogous procedure done to treat the vestibular schwannoma (aka. acoustic neuroma) on my left side except instead of ultrasound, the procedure used high energy x-rays focused just on the tumor to get the total dose while surrounding tissues received a much lower dose.

The procedure is called Fractionated Stereotactic Radiosurgery (FSR) and it was performed at Johns Hopkins and it worked very well for me without having to drill another hole in my skull to access the posterior fossa. The tumor is still there, but the radiation damages the DNA and the tumor is unable to reproduce and grow. I have had periodic MRI's to monitor the size of the size of the tumor, last one in 2014, but I may not bother to have any more since the three or four MRI's I've had since 2001 have not shown any growth.

The procedure was done in five outpatient sessions that take about an hour each, but the actual treatment takes only a few minutes. Most the time is getting the skull aligned in the LINAC machine. The "aiming" is done with the same machine but at a much lower power setting. A special face mask must be made to hold the skull securely and that process is what takes the longest (three or four hours in a separate appointment prior to treatment.) It looked similar to the images I found on the 'Net below. I received treatment on a Varian LINAC.

The Varian LINAC at Johns Hopkins looked similar to this one below.

I received a total dose of 2.5 millirad over the five treatments and the X-rays were generated at 2.5 MeV. The collimated X-rays are swept over 180 degree arcs over a series of azimuths to "spread out" the dosing while the centroid of the arcs is on the tumor itself. Other than some temporary vertigo which was treated with one regimen of Prednisone and the loss of my remaining hearing in my left ear, I have had no other side effects. I was losing the hearing in my left ear prior to diagnosis, as well as some unusual balance issues. My facial nerves appeared to not be effected thankfully.