Yadira Erriguible, 66, recalls suddenly losing something most people take for granted. “I lost my sense of taste and smell,” she says. “This was in November 2017. My friends insisted I go to an ENT (ear nose & throat physician) because this wasn't normal for my age."
A few doctor visits and imaging tests later, Ms. Erriguible learned she had three unruptured brain aneurysms — bulges in the walls of blood vessels — which often don't produce any symptoms. But they can act like ticking time bombs and they can cause serious harm or death to a patient if they burst, says Ms. Erriguible’s doctor, interventional neuroradiologist Italo Linfante, M.D. In her case, the only other symptom was an occasional headache.
When brain aneurysms need repair, experts at Baptist Health Neuroscience Center and Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute work together to fix them in a minimally invasive manner, without cutting open the skull. They do this with the help of a relatively new stent-like device, the flow diverter.
[Transcript]
[Baptist Health]
[Yadira Erriguible, Patient]
Dr. Italo Linfante old me he was going to do a new procedure with a flow diverter, and it was going to be inserted in my artery, which is going to make my artery stronger and avoid more aneurysms to come.
[Footage of the outside of Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute]
[Dr. Italo Linfante, Medical Director of Interventional Neuroradiology and Endovascular Neurosurgery]
Brain aneurysms basically are a weak spot in the artery. So the artery, this is a tubular structure it all of a sudden balloons out because one of the walls is very weak. Why they are dangerous because this weak wall can eventually burst. So, if it bursts, blood will gush out and gush out inside the brain, which can be deadly.
[Footage of Dr. Linfante is shown examining brain arteries]
[Dr. Linfante]
There's two main treatments. One is open surgery, which is the traditional treatment; you have to do a craniotomy, open the skull, and find the aneurysm, and put a clip on the neck of the lesion. However, over the last 20 years, we've been working on endovascular treatment, which is less invasive, and by endovascular treatment, we access the femoral artery of the groin, and then we navigate a catheter all the way to the brain vessels, and we repair the aneurysm, so to speak from the inside.
[Dr. Linfante]
So flow diverters are perfect for this type of aneurysm. In a way you can implant the device from normal vessel to normal vessel, and bypassing, so to speak internally, this lesion, and then the artificial reconstruct, and this is a follow-up on geography. On this particular page, you can see, there's no aneurysm. The artery has completely reconstructed itself.
[Footage of Yadira and Dr. Linfante are shown at a conference]
[Yadira Erriguible]
I'm very grateful, very grateful. I feel like I can live a better life now, and I'm looking forward to have a happy life.
[Dr. Linfante]
It is the most rewarding part of this job.
[Yadira Erriguible]
Yes.
[Baptist Health Logo]
[End Transcript]
