How LITT Reaches Deep Brain Tumours Through a 3-mm Hole | Functional Surgery Minute #04

Hypothalamic hamartoma sits surrounded by the optic chiasm, the pituitary stalk, the mammillary bodies, and perforating vessels.

Traditional open approach to hypothalamic hamartoma meant splitting fissures, retracting the frontal lobe, working millimeter by millimeter around structures that could not be touched.

Open series for hypothalamic hamartoma reported complications in more than half of patients.

LITT uses a stereotactic bolt through a 3 millimeter burr hole, robotically guided, with a laser catheter advanced to the target inside the MRI scanner.

Real-time thermal map shows the ablation expanding second by second during LITT.

Safety markers are placed next to the optic tract and the fornix, and ablation is stopped the moment heat approaches them.

Across published hamartoma series, seizure freedom rates are 56 to 84%.

Hospital stay for LITT is just overnight.

LITT requires no craniotomy, just a small scalp incision.

LITT is expanding to mesial temporal epilepsy, insular cavernoma, and periventricular heterotopia.

LITT works from inside the lesion, leaving the healthy brain overlying untouched.