Allina surgeons get new treatment approach for brain aneurysms

[Star Tribune, January 30, 2012] As physicians, nurses and technicians looked on, Dr. Benjamin Crandall and Dr. Josser Delgado gingerly inserted a catheter into an artery in the leg of a 55-year-old woman.

To guide them, the neuroradiologists watched their progress on several screens showing multiple images of the blood vessels in her brain. It was her brain — or, more accurately, a large 1-inch cerebral aneurysm — that was their destination.

Delgado's team at Abbott Northwestern is the only group in the Twin Cities area, and one of only two in Minnesota, implanting the Pipeline device.