A little boy can run again thanks to a procedure performed by a team at the SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital
Using a surgical technique involving deep cerebral stimulation, a team of neurosurgeons and neuro paediatricians at the Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children’s Hospital has treated a 9-year-old boy who was suffering from a serious movement disorder that prevented him from walking.
During this procedure, a cutting-edge robot was used, which allowed the electrodes to be implanted in the brain using pre-planned trajectories.
Before the procedure, an MRI scan is performed on the patient so that the surgeons can examine how best to access the area to be operated on. On the day of the surgery itself, they perform a CAT scan on the patient so that the robot has coordinates that allow it to reproduce, with a high degree of precision, the trajectory devised for the implantation of the electrodes.
In relation to traditional surgery, the robot has certain advantages in that the surgeons do not have to place a guiding frame on the patient’s head and they can implant multiple electrodes in a shorter space of time, considerably reducing the duration of the operation.
The SJD Barcelona Children’s Hospital treats patients all over Spain as it was designated as anational reference centre (CSUR) by the Ministry of Health for the treatment of rare illnesses that present movement disorders in childhood, as is the case with primary generalised dystonia.