Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles continue to find success in using ultrasound to “start” the brains of people trapped in a minimally conscious state. In a report This month, they detail two patients with chronic and severe brain injuries who experienced improvements in awareness of the outside world after undergoing treatment. Scientists are now more hopeful about the future of ultrasound for these difficult cases.
In 2016, California resident Bradley Crehan was hit by a car, which caused a severe brain injury. After surgery, Crehan was placed in a medically induced coma to help him recover. But Crehan showed little awareness after he woke up and was largely unable to communicate with others. He was then dat an experimental treatment calledIntensity Concentrated Ultrasound (LIFU) by UCLA scientists.
The treatment involved ultrasound pulses directed to the thalamus of the brain – a region that helps us coordinate our motor and sensory functions and is thought to play a key role in consciousness – for five minutes, hoping for an awakening activity that tends to remain inactive in coma time. One day after treatment, Crehan began to show signs of recovery and was Acan recognize and reach objects. Days later, he managed to answer questions in the blink of an eye. And within four months, sooner than doctors had predicted, he was fully conscious and able to leave the hospital, although he would still need physical therapy and ongoing rehabilitation.
As amazing as Crehan’s recovery was, it may of course not be ultrasound therapy Cause. People who recover spontaneously from a coma-like condition are unheard of, especially in the first days and weeks after it started. It was possible that the technique was simply a red herring and that Crehan would wake up no matter what the doctors were doing.
Into the new report, published this month, in the journal Brain Stimulation, the authors say that now you have more evidence that ultrasound can really help people who are shaking at the edge of consciousness.
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They used the technique in three patients living with chronic brain injuries that left them in a minimally conscious state for more than one year. In one patient, ultrasound did not appear to improve their function at all. But in the other two, doctors saw an improvement in the first few days of two treatment. A patient – a 56-year-old man who had suffered a stroke – was able to answer certain commands, answer yes-or-no questions and recognize family members in a photo. The other – a 50-year-old woman who suffered cardiac arrest – could now recognize objects and communicate with others.
“What is remarkable is that both showed significant responses in just a few days after the intervention,” study author and UCLA psychologist Martin Monti said in a statement. released by the university. “I was hoping for that, but it’s amazing to see it with your own eyes. The sight of two of the three patients who were in a chronic condition improves significantly in a few days after treatment is an extremely promising result. ”
Because chronic coma-like patients are much less likely to recover spontaneously than patients with acute coma, researchers are more confident. ultrasound made the difference here. Also very important, no safety issues were observed, the vital signs of the patients remaining throughout the treatment.
Unfortunately, the treatment of these patients did not lead to the same thing amazing recovery that Crehan has experienced. The 50-year-old woman continued to have Improved awareness months later, but she he was still considered minimally conscious, while the 56-year-old man’s condition returned to baseline by the time of a follow-up visit three months later. Restoring people’s consciousness is likely to remain a difficult and impossible task in many cases, even if this technique proves to work.
However, for the families of these patients, even a certain level of regained awareness will be useful and there may still be ways to improve the effectiveness of this technique and similar brain stimulation techniques that are being studied. For now, UCLA scientists he continues his research with ultrasound and hope to soon follow clinical trials with a larger group of patients. They also intend to study exactly how this technique changes the brain.