Daily Memphian: First FDA-approved alternative aneurysm surgery performed in Memphis

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On Monday, Brown underwent a different procedure to prevent a second aneurysm from causing harm. But instead of an incision across her head, she has a tiny incision on her groin.

Brown was the first patient in the country to receive a new FDA-approved alternative surgical procedure.

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Her primary care physician recommended she go see Dr. Adam Arthur at Semmes-Murphey where a scan of her brain revealed she had an aneurysm about the size of a pen hole on each side of her brain.

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After Brown was put under anesthesia, Arthur, who is also the chief of neurosurgery at Methodist University Hospital, pinned her head to keep it still and cut an incision from behind her ear up to her hairline.

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Arthur had met two Sequent principals in 2011 after he gave a presentation at a medical conference in Europe.

They were Tom Wilder, president and CEO of Sequent Medical Inc., and Dr. Bill Patterson, who developed the Woven EndoBridge (WEB), an intravascular therapy for aneurysms.

They asked if he’d be the principal investigator on the clinical trial for WEB.

“No one had ever asked me to run an international trial at multiple, different centers,” Arthur said.

Arthur accepted and began what would be a more than five-year effort to perform the first FDA-approved surgery on Brown. The WEB has been available in Europe since 2010.

Methodist University Hospital was the first among the 27 clinical sites to enroll a patient, and Arthur was the first doctor to perform the surgery in August 2014. Those who enrolled in the clinical trial had a minimum year of follow up to make sure their aneurysms were fixed.

In September 2018, Arthur and Sequent Medical executives presented their findings to an FDA panel in Washington, D.C., who voted for the device’s approval.

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More than 40 doctors from around the country are in Memphis watching the first procedures through a live-stream at the Medical Education & Research Institute (MERI) across the street, so they can learn how to perform the procedure.

The second set of cases will be performed beginning Thursday in New York and expand to other cities thereafter. There are about 100 surgeries scheduled in the next month.

Five doctors in the Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare system are trained and available to perform the WEB procedure.

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Daily Memphian: First FDA-approved alternative aneurysm surgery performed in Memphis