Indiana woman benefits from new brain aneurysm treatment

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) - A speech-language pathologist most of her adult life, Lisa Stimley of Terre Haute already knew about brain aneurysms when she learned in 2015 that she had them.

But thanks to a relatively new device, she's functioning just fine as an active 60-year-old grandmother.

September is "National Brain Aneurysm Awareness Month," a subject of which Stimley is very much aware.

In the early 1990s, Stimley moved to Terre Haute from Chicago Heights, Illinois, with her husband, Mark.

Stimley explained how she discovered the existence of her aneurysms and what she did about them.

"I have had right-side hearing loss since 2006," said Stimley, who works for Springhill Village rehabilitation center.

"I had been following up with the audiologist in Terre Haute, Dr. Sheryl Boatz.

"Dr. Boatz, at one point, sent me to Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis to get an MRI study and have it looked at because it was unusual to have this severe of hearing loss in just one ear."

Those images revealed nothing significant.

"Then in 2015, I had a significant drop in my hearing," she said.

"The audiologist here in Terre Haute referred me back to IU Med.and I got another MRI. It came back and doctors found that I had a meningioma, which was a small tumor growing on the protective covering of my brain. On another follow-up MRI (in June 2016), they found some white spots on my brain and realized at that point that I had the aneurysms."

That news came right before the Stimleys were ready to take a two-week European vacation, which went as scheduled with no health issues in July 2016.

After they returned to Indiana, a doctor recommended to Stimley that she undergo brain surgery to remove the aneurysms.

"That blew me out of the water," she said. "I didn't expect that at all. I figured they would wait and watch.

"Knowing what I knew about brain injuries and strokes (as a speech pathologist), anytime anybody messes inside your brain, you're going to have some side effects. So I knew that I didn't want to have an open-brain surgery."

After she inquired about other treatment options, Stimley did some online research and discovered the next-generation Pipeline Flex embolization device, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in February 2015. That's when Dr. Daniel H. Sahlein from Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine entered the picture.

"Her aneurysm was a little bit unique in that it involved a fairly long segment of artery," he said. "A whole segment of the artery was completely diseased."

Sahlein performed the Pipeline Flex procedure on Stimley last Sept. 28, a Wednesday, at IU Medical Center.

"It's really the only device you can treat this aneurysm with," Sahlein noted, referring to the difficulty of treating out-pouchings from the artery. "Hers was a complicated aneurysm."

The procedure went perfectly. One day after the three-hour procedure, Stimley was released from the hospital. She went back to work the following Monday.

"They basically go up through the groin, like when they do stents for hearts," she explained, "but it went all the way up to my brain."

Sahlein said the device, which is made of self-expanding metal, enters through a catheter in the leg.

"The Pipeline Flex is a braided stent," he continued. "It's actually wires that are woven together. They're pieces of metal that are woven into a cylinder. It looks like a little pipe, except that the walls are open. ... The device is placed into the artery itself, across the diseased segment, across the aneurysms. It provides a scaffold for the inner layers of the blood vessel to actually grow over the stents, thereby sealing off the aneurysm."

Stimley said she felt relatively fine afterward, never really experiencing any severe pain or discomfort.

"I was tired, of course," she admitted. "But I felt good."

Afterward, doctors mentioned that Stimley's aneurysms were worse than they initially realized and acting quickly proved beneficial to her health.

"It could be that I was born with them," she said. "Nobody will ever know, although they never showed up on any of the previous MRIs."

Stimley returned for a follow-up visit in April 2017 and learned the aneurysms were "completely gone."

"It was such a relief to know that it was all over and done," she acknowledged, "and I didn't have to have a brain surgery."

So how does Stimley feel today?

"I feel good," she said. "My husband and I still like to travel, hike and take long walks. We walk around Terre Haute and we like going to all the parks.

"I'm just enjoying going on with life."

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Source: (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star

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Information from: Tribune-Star, http://www.tribstar.com