Swedish Medical Center Testing New Brain Aneurysm Treatment Technology

JNF Medical Advisory Board Member, Dr. Donald Frei of Swedish Medical Center, is leading the study of an investigation device called WEB to treat brain aneurysms. Swedish is one of the 20 sites across the country doing trials on this new technology.

The device is already approved in Europe, and doctors just put it into the first patient in Colorado.

“Brain Aneurysms are deadly, and if we can come up with better and safer and more effective ways of treating brain aneurysms, we absolutely should do that,” said Dr. Don Frei with Radiology Imaging Associates.

The new technology is a tiny metal mesh sphere that expands inside the artery to seal of the aneurysm. It  is a revolutionary treatment for challenging ruptured and unruptured aneurysms. The initiation of the WEB study represents an important milestone for this exciting technology platform and a critical step towards improving outcomes in a patient population with significant unmet needs.

The idea — if blood can’t get in, it can’t rupture.

“We have no idea if this device is going to be better than what’s out there already and that’s what the study is going to try to find out,” said Frei.

The study will enroll 139 patients at hospitals across the United States and in Canada and Europe.

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