May is stroke awareness month and doctors at a West Palm Beach hospital now have a new tool to treat previously untreatable aneurysms.
Two months ago, Adrene King was rushed into the operation room at St. Mary's Medical Center.
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"My speech was somewhat slurred, and my hand and arm were locked," said King. "The CAT scan actually revealed that I had had two strokes. one older and then the one that was affecting me that day."
The whole incident caught her off-guard, but so did news that she had an aneurysm that needed special equipment and treatment, specifically the surpass streamline flow diverter.
"I was not so much shocked," said King. "I was grateful, because I know that if the aneurysm wasn't treated, I would have some extremely severe health consequences."
The new device is available at St. Mary's Medical Center and Palm Beach Children's Hospital. It treats unruptured large and giant wide-neck intracranial aneurysms.
Dr. Ali Malek, the director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center, said it is a game changer. It allows him to treat certain aneurysms that he couldn't before.
"When we put a flow diverter there, we are putting scaffolding that allows the blood vessel to regrow and basically prevents an aneurysm from ever being able to come back," said Malek. "What a flow diverter does is essentially changes how much stress an aneurysm is under from the blood flow that is going into it by changing the direction of flow of blood and the amount of pressure and flow there is within an aneurysm."