Allegheny General Hospital Neurosurgeon Receives NIH Grant for Brain Aneurysm Research
Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) July 06, 2013 -- Khaled Aziz, MD, Director of the Center for Complex Intracranial Surgery at Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) has been awarded a two-year grant of $423,852 from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund a first-of-its-kind study that will attempt to determine how brain blood vessel tissue becomes vulnerable to aneurysm development and if there is a link between blood flow and vessel wall structure and strength.
"Better understanding the pathology of aneurysms vessel walls and how blood flow through those vessels impacts vulnerability for rupture may eventually help doctors develop more effective diagnostic procedures to both predict aneurysm onset and determine which patients require immediate surgery for this potentially life-threatening condition after an aneurysm has developed," Dr. Aziz said.
Cerebral aneurysms are enlargements of cerebral artery walls, and their spontaneous ruptures are responsible for 80% of hemorrhagic strokes, which are often fatal. The condition affects five to eight percent of adults.
Dr. Aziz and his AGH team will dissect aneurysm vessel tissue samples from patients undergoing aneurysm repair at the hospital, establish a tissue registration process and oversee the blinded hemodynamic flow fields’ assessment for each clinical case the study observes.
This research involves a multiple Program Investigator (PI) effort. Other researchers collaborating with the project, as PIs, are Anne Robertson, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, who will conduct experimental work, and Juan Cebral, MD of George Mason University, who will contribute Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling.
Dan Laurent, West Penn Allegheny Health System, http://www.wpahs.org, 412-330-4430, [email protected]
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