Are there advantages to treating a patient with a subarachnoid Essay

Are there advantages to treating a patient with a subarachnoid hemorrhage with endovascular coiling rather than neurosurgical clipping - Essay Example er to place an inert metal clip at the base of an aneurysm, removing this aneurysm from blood circulation and retaining the healthy part of an artery to supply blood to the brain. This procedure has been partially replaced in recent years by a relatively new procedure, endovascular coiling, which involves inserting a catheter through the femoral artery of a patient into the brain and using this catheter to fill the aneurysm with fine coils made up of the inert metal platinum, or other suitable material in order to strengthen and remove the affected part of the artery from blood circulation. Endovascular coiling has now becoming widely accepted because it is cheaper, less stressful for a patient and requires a shorter stay in a hospital, with generally lower absolute risks as compared to neurosurgical clipping. However, it is not possible to approach every aneurysm by endovascular coiling and depending on the location of the aneurysm neurosurgical clipping may still be required to be used. This dissertation presents a discussion about the relative advantage of using endovascular coiling as opposed to neurosurgical clipping as a treatment for SAH related aneurysms. Subarachnoid haemorrhage, or SAH, is a stroke subtype which occurs as a result of the rupture of either an intracranial aneurysm or an aneurysm in the basal cerebral artery which supplies blood to the human brain (Fassbender, 2001, Pp. 534) and (Kissela, 2002, Pp. 1321 – 1325). The classical presentation of SAH is a sudden and severe headache which is accompanied by vomiting, photophobia and neck stiffness (Whitfield, 2004, Pp. 14 – 16). However, it has been estimated that only one in four patients who suffer from such sever headache have had a SAH occurrence and that such headaches can also be the result of vascular—intracranial venous thrombosis, infections including meningitis, encephalitis etc, intracranial tumours, acute hydrocephalus or migraine etc to name a few other causes (Al – Shahi,