this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
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Smallest brain implant ever helping those living with hydrocephalus (www.rnz.co.nz)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Dave to c/newzealand
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Clinical trials are underway for a neural implant to monitor brain pressure in those living with hydrocephalus.

The condition causes fluid to build up in the brain which, if untreated, can be fatal.

Patients can be born with hydrocephalus or develop it later in life.

It is typically treated with a small tube, called a shunt, implanted under the skin which drains fluid from the brain into the stomach.

However, shunts had a 50 percent chance of failure in the first two years.

To tackle this, researchers at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute and Kitea Health developed an implant to measure pressure in the brain using an external, wireless wand.

The implant is only two by three millimetres, and weighs 0.3 of a gram.

Clinical trials in adults are about 50 percent complete, and trials on children have begun.

It is a world first, the smallest brain implant ever developed, as well as the first implantable medical device developed in New Zealand.

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[–] liv 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Definitely. It feels like it will be a turning point in how it is managed, especially if health funders figure out that it will cut costs and actually fund it.

A bunch of brain illnesses/injuries trigger sickness responses, it's a problem for sure. The warning signs for this in adults sound like common problems too (headaches, poor balance, concentration problems, needing to wee a lot). Being able to wave a "wand" and see if your shunt is working sounds like magic!

[–] Dave 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Haha it pretty much is magic!

One of the things I was reading said that the condition is common(er) in older people and often mistaken for dementia, but unlike dementia there is treatment for this and they get their brain function back.

[–] liv 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh yikes not another one. Honestly thinking about getting a tattooed list on my forearm of the "mistaken for dementia" conditions when I hit 70, so that I can try to get checked for them instead of being thrown into a dementia ward.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah scary stuff, and it makes you wonder if all that misdiagnosis is impacting on research by throwing out the results.

[–] liv 2 points 1 week ago

Didn't think of that - it might be, since formal dementia diagnoses are symptom based not biomarker based.

This is what's happening at the moment with long covid studies to some extent because it's not just one illness, it's a raft of illnesses that have been caused by the same virus.