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Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital (RUH) Foundation is seeking to raise $1.2 million to help change the way it conducts some brain surgeries by purchasing a neurosurgical robot.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Amit Persad is currently acquiring the skills to operate the robot at Western University in London, Ontario. He will begin his practice starting in the summer of 2025 at RUH.
He explained how the neurosurgical robot would make a difference in the lives of patients with epilepsy.
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“Patients with epilepsy have these seizures and seizures are just uncontrolled electrical activity, Persad said.
“Think about a surge in a circuit board and when a patient has seizures it comes from one spot — usually in the brain, sometimes it comes from more (places) and in those cases you can’t generally do a sample surgery,” he said.
“But when it comes from one spot, if you can figure out what that spot is you can either disconnect the wires to the rest of the brain, or you can take out that malfunctioning part of the circuit board and … put the wires into the brain so that there’s electrical contacts … with all of these different portions of the brain.
“Once we figure out which part’s malfunctioning, we can plan whether or not that’s a piece of the brain that can either be safely removed or disconnected,” Persad added.
Robot procedure minimally invasive
The traditional way of inserting electrodes can be invasive and take many hours, according to Persad. A neurosurgical robot can make the procedure minimally invasive and take only one to two hours.
Persad feels it will also be able to help identify more problem areas for those who suffer from epilepsy.
“Without the robot and getting in the 16 to 22 electrodes, you’ll never be able to figure out where the epilepsy is coming from. If you don’t know where it’s coming from, you can’t treat it,” he explained.
“If you don’t know what the piece of the brain is, you also can’t understand which patients have more of an epilepsy circuit. Without that understanding, it’s impossible to treat.”
According to Persad, if the robot is purchased its main use would be for those who need surgery and aren’t getting better from prescribed medication.
“Most patients with epilepsy get better with medications. About a third of them don’t get better with medications and of those, many of them are candidates to be investigated. It depends on what kind of seizures they have,” he said.
In order to get the funding for the robot over the line, philanthropist Merlis Belsher and his family have said they will match donations of up to $600,000.
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