What starts as a minor bump to the head can quietly become much more serious. In some cases, a fall or even a seemingly harmless injury can lead to what’s called a chronic subdural hematoma – a collection of blood on the surface of the brain that can cause headaches, confusion, balance problems, weakness or speech difficulties
A common treatment for these chronic subdural hematomas involves drilling a small hole in the skull to drain the area where the fluid has built up. But that treatment alone might not last: The fluid can come back, and the patient may need for the procedure to be repeated. Now there’s a newly available treatment in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, which takes a more modern approach to permanently fix these hematomas.
MUSC Health Florence Medical Center is the first MUSC Health hospital outside of Charleston to offer middle meningeal artery (MMA) embolization, a minimally invasive procedure, performed after the traditional drilling treatment. It blocks blood flow to the vessels feeding the irritated membranes of a chronic subdural hematoma.
Doctors guide a flexible catheter, often from the wrist or groin, to the middle meningeal artery, which supplies blood to the dura, the membrane that forms the brain’s outermost covering. During the MMA embolization, doctors then deliver an embolizing agent through the catheter to block or seal off the tiny vessels feeding the damaged part of the membrane. The goal? To turn off the “fuel line” that allows the membrane to continue to leak and accumulate fluid.
“Recent studies have shown that combining the traditional treatment plus the MMA embolization actually reduces the chance of recurrence from around 11% to 4%,” said MUSC Health Florence Medical Center neurosurgeon Pedro Norat, M.D. “So, for the patient’s quality of life, they will undergo fewer procedures, which can lead to fewer complications and a better outcome because the procedure can be done in an outpatient setting.”
The arrival of MMA embolization at MUSC Health Florence Medical Center is part of a larger effort by MUSC Health to ensure that advanced treatments are available closer to more people in South Carolina.
“The investment MUSC has made in this region, and specifically in Florence, to support this service for the community reflects MUSC’s mission and its commitment to providing quality care for patients across the state,” said MUSC Health Florence Medical Center’s director of imaging services, Ken Watts.
For Norat, the reward is seeing his patients access a cutting-edge, less-invasive treatment that reduces the recurrence risk for chronic subdural hematomas, so close to home.
“Being able to offer advanced care here locally instead of patients being transferred down to Charleston in order to get it makes me very happy,” said Norat. “As a partner to the standard treatment, I think this makes Florence a city with some of the best care possible.”
