Cool Cranium Drill Reduces Surgery Task from 2 hours to 2 Minutes
The same type of drill used in machine shops may soon be used to drill through the human skull.
Right now, brain surgeons use hand drills. It's a painstaking process, but necessary in order to avoid sensitive areas of the brain. Drilling a hole in a patient's skull can take a neurosurgeon two hours, kind of like "doing archaeology," as one doctor put it. That's because every layer of bone can be a potential minefield of nerves, veins and arteries that must not be disturbed.
The new drill can do the same thing in two and a half minutes.
This drastic time savings should translate into greater survival and fewer complications from brain surgery. That's because the wound is open less which reduces the chance of infection. The patient will not be under anesthesia as long, which reduces the chance of complications. The shorter surgery will also be less expensive.
The drill hasn't been tried on humans yet. But research on its development was published in the journal Neurosurgical Focus. "We knew the technology was already available in the machine world, but no one ever applied it to medical applications," Dr. William Couldwell, of the University of Utah, where the drill is being developed, told The Telegraph.
Since every person's anatomy is different, the key to making the new drill work is getting the patient's MRI scan first. This road map gives doctors a precise look inside the patient's brain and identifies exact areas to avoid.
Armed with that information, surgeons can then program the cutting path of the drill, making sure to employ safety barriers within one millimeter of danger zones.
Dr A.K. Balaji, who worked on the drill, said: "The software lets the surgeon choose the optimum path from point A to point B, like Google Maps," adding ,"Think of the barriers like a construction zone. You slow down to navigate it safely."
In addition to boring a hole, the drill also gets rid of the excess bone accurately and rapidly, similar to a mill.
