The first patient will shortly be treated with the CLS laser ablation system in a sponsored study at Skåne University Hospital. The study will include five patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord. The Swedish medical journal Läkartidningen now reports from the hospital.

When laser ablation is used in neurosurgery part of the procedure normally takes place in an operating room and part in the MRI bore, which means that the patient needs to be transported back and forth. At the hospital the clinical team is now preparing for a new approach where the patient will be positioned inside the MRI scanner for the whole intervention, i.e. from when the laser applicator is precisely positioned inside the brain through a small hole in the skull, until the brain tumor is destroyed using heat generated by the laser.

 This new the procedure will be more accurate and safer for the patient.

“For me as a surgeon, this means that I can be absolutely sure that the laser probe I insert into the brain ends up exactly right,” comments Hjálmar Bjartmarz, neurosurgeon at Skåne University Hospital, and continues:

“Transporting the anesthetized patient back and forth is of course a risk. Thanks to the fact that we can operate while the patient is positioned in the MRI scanner, the method becomes safer for the patient. We can also directly see if all tumor tissue has been destroyed.”

Read more about how Skåne University Hospital is preparing to operate on patients with brain tumors inside the MRI scanner in the article in Läkartidningen (in Swedish) here:

Patienter med hjärntumörer ska opereras i magnetkamera (lakartidningen.se)