Salt Lake City, UT -- (ReleaseWire) -- 02/08/2022 --There is new hope for children in Utah and throughout the Intermountain West who suffer from seizures or have brain tumors thanks to innovative care at Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital.

Neurosurgeons at Primary Children's Hospital are now able to use a highly-specialized intraoperative MRI to clearly see deep inside the brain during surgeries to help kids with severe seizures and protect kids' healthy brain tissue when removing tumors.

Primary Children's is the only pediatric hospital in the Intermountain West using an interoperative MRI (iMRI), which allows neurosurgeons to scan a patient's brain and make needed adjustments in the middle of surgery. This iMRI system is the first in the nation to use a special coil to dramatically enhance images.

"Using this system, I come into every surgery more confident that we're going to get all of the tumor out the first time and not need follow-up procedures," said Samuel Cheshier, MD, neurosurgeon at Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital and University of Utah Health. "These brain scans give us real-time data to ensure there aren't parts of the tumor tissue lingering."

The system is smaller and specifically designed for children and their developing brains. iMRI-assisted surgeries also can be less invasive for children, helping reduce risks.

In the past, pediatric neurosurgeons could use an iMRI at an adult hospital to perform these surgeries, but systems there didn't always fit a child's needs, and physicians had to be selective on which patients would be able to get the iMRI-aided procedure.

With the new system at Primary Children's Hospital, Dr. Cheshier says he uses iMRI for nearly every surgery to remove brain tumors. It helps him remove tumors with greater precision and leave more healthy brain tissue untouched, which is critical to a growing child and their future development.

iMRI-assisted neurosurgery was beneficial for 11-year-old Olivia Jones, who was Dr. Chesier's first patient to benefit from the new system.

In October 2021, Olivia was airlifted from a hospital in Idaho Falls to Primary Children's after doctors discovered a tumor on the back of her brainstem, which was causing serious issues.

"It's so frightening as a parent when you hear a diagnosis like that, but you're thankful that this technology is being used to help your child," said Heidi Jones, Olivia's mother.

Primary Children's physicians are still monitoring Olivia closely. So far, scans have shown no signs of the tumor after surgery.

Dr. Robert Bollo, a neurosurgeon at University of Utah Health and Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital, uses the real-time brain scans to safely treat overactive neurons in patients with seizures.

Dr. Bollo and his team use a robot to insert a laser deep into the brain where the neurons trigger seizure episodes. Once in place, the patient is moved to the iMRI machine, where the surgeon can see in real-time the active parts of the brain where the laser is working.

The heat removes some neurons which leads to less seizures, and doctors use the iMRI to precisely move the laser to other areas of the brain.

Neurologists at Primary Children's Hospitals are excited to see the improved results iMRI will bring to their patients, and how it could lead to fewer follow up visits.

"It's still incredible to think I can get MRI scans in real time while I'm operating on someone's brain," said Dr. Bollo. "It's changing the way we help our patients and is getting better results."

About Intermountain Healthcare
Intermountain Healthcare is a nonprofit system of 25 hospitals, 225 clinics, a Medical Group with 2,600 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health insurance company called SelectHealth, and other health services in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Intermountain is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes and sustainable costs. For updates, see https://intermountainhealthcare.org/news.