Brain shrinks in new head surgery method

After stoking your warm, family room fire with the poker, go ahead and jab your brain while you're at it. Sounds like a bad idea, right? Well, surgeons at the Massachusetts General Hospital, led by Chad R. Gordon essentially did just that when they used a heated rod to shrink a patient's brain in what they are calling "bipolar duraplasty," a new cranial procedure that actually allows doctors to temporary reshape the brain in patients with deformities of the skull.

How is this possible? How can we alter an organ that we know so little about and remains the topic of heavy research? With bipolar duraplasty, surgeons use heat to gingerly and strategically shrink that brain, bringing it back to normal proportions and allowing for the opportunity to place a safer and more aesthetically appealing barrier over the brain in comparison to the old method of helmet therapy.

For one man, this new procedure proved to be the difference between a new skull and a lifelong deformity. After having a tumor removed from his brain, his skull then suffered an infection forcing doctors to remove part of his skull. Prior to Dr. Gordon's groundbreaking procedure this man would have been forced to live the rest of his life with a helmet to protect his fragile brain. However, with the first ever attempt at bipolar duraplasty, Dr. Gordon and his team were able to successfully reshape the man's brain and replace the skull in the place where it was missing.

In a video provided by the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, which gives a live-action look at the procedure, the patient's brain literally contracts before your eyes as the surgeon applies the heat with a small metal rod in a precise checkerboard pattern. With this new technology, doctors can now avoid complicated skull reshaping operations and patients can avoid having to wear helmets the rest of their lives. Instead, the ability to replace the missing piece of skull provides optimal protection and appearance for the patient.

While this procedure may seem like something out of a science-fiction novel, Gordon noted in a Hopkins press release that it is "simply applying time-tested plastic surgery knowledge and experience to an otherwise difficult problem."

While the procedure is still relatively new, the middle-aged man who was the first patient to receive this treatment was monitored for a year after surgery and reported no complications. Further studies are planned to gain a better sense of where this procedure could go, but for now the outlook seems to be bright.