Although pacemakers are usually associated with the heart, Medtronic has developed a pacemaker attached to two electrodes to induce deep-brain stimulation for minimally conscious coma patients.  Figure 1 shows an x-ray image of the device in a patients head, notice how deep the device must be in order to stimulate the brain sufficiently to wake someone from a coma.  Patients with severe brain injuries often slip into comas for the rest of their lives and are more than often thought of as “gonners”.  This success story from Chicago could change the way modern medicine sees these victims.  The plan is to test the device in 12 more patients and then move on to the wide-spread clinical applications thereafter.

Figure 1

-Amy Shah

This entry was posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2007 at 4:28 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.