Gallery: Toolkit: A Brain Surgeon's Must-Have Gizmos
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"Surgery is an art," says neurosurgeon Michael Lim, who plays the violin when he isn't excising lesions from brains. As director of the Metastatic Brain Tumor Center at Johns Hopkins, Lim performs about 350 such procedures a year. It's a job that requires a wealth of high tech tools—and they must be deployed with a finesse that would put a concert violinist to shame.
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__BrainLab VarioGuide Instrument Alignment System__ Before surgery begins, this device creates a 3-D map of the patient's head. It's like a GPS system, Lim says. It helps him identify an entry and target point, and it guides a biopsy needle to any spot within the brain so the syringe can snag a sample. __$15,720__
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__Micro Surgical Instruments__ Operating on an organ with the consistency of Jell-O is tricky. Lim uses these extremely tiny tools for everything from shoving blood vessels aside to prodding nerves. Some of his tools are numbered like golf clubs. He favors two, six, seven, and eight. __$50-800__
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__Zeiss OPMI Pentero Microscope__ Neurosurgeons do some of their most delicate work while peering through the lens of a microscope. This one lets doctors toggle between MRI and CT scans of the brain; virtual images of the tumor and other structures can be superimposed on those pics. __Starting at $200,000__
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__Integra Ojemann Cortical Stimulator__ To avoid cutting the wrong bits of gray matter, this electric probe is used to deliver zaps to the brains of wide-awake patients. If speech slows or limbs twitch, surgeons place labels on those areas so they know not to cut there. __Price undisclosed__
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__OmniGuide BeamPath Neuro Laser__ This CO~2~ laser has a tip that's just 320 microns wide. "Some tumors can be rock hard," Lim says. When a surgeon encounters those rugged lesions, a narrow beam of light works much better than a scalpel. The heat it emits can also help minimize bleeding. __$70,000__
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__Eisai Pharmaceuticals Gliadel Wafers__ Surgeons sometimes insert one of these tablets—which release medication slowly—into the hollow area where a tumor used to be. It keeps the region medicated until the wound has healed and chemotherapy can begin. __$25,309 for an eight-pack__
