Smallest brain implant ever helping those living with hydrocephalus
Smallest brain implant ever helping those living with hydrocephalus
Smallest brain implant ever helping those living with hydrocephalus
Clinical trials are underway for a neural implant to monitor brain pressure in those living with hydrocephalus.
The condition causes fluid to build up in the brain which, if untreated, can be fatal.
Patients can be born with hydrocephalus or develop it later in life.
It is typically treated with a small tube, called a shunt, implanted under the skin which drains fluid from the brain into the stomach.
However, shunts had a 50 percent chance of failure in the first two years.
To tackle this, researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Kitea Health developed an implant to measure pressure in the brain using an external, wireless wand.
The implant is only two by three millimetres, and weighs 0.3 of a gram.
Clinical trials in adults are about 50 percent complete, and trials on children have begun.
It is a world first, the smallest brain implant ever developed, as well as the first implantable medical device developed in New Zealand.
This is so cool!!! It could really help people.
I'm curious about powering it. Is there a battery in the brain? Is it part of the 2mmx3mm package? Is it powered by the signal from whatever they use to read it (RFID kind of thing)?
I didn't see anything in the article covering it. I think a pet identification microchip is a similar size to this (normally described as the size of a grain of rice) and I'm curious about the similarities. Presumably the brain one also includes the pressure sensor in the package.
Exactly like pet microchips, it has no battery! It just sits there inert and takes power from the scanner they use to take readings.
This article mentions that, and also has a picture of it.
Wonder if it will be the start of more tech? When looking around I noticed there's an abandoned patent from years ago for measuring cerebral bloodflow, which is interesting.