Bioresorbable brain sensor lessens risk of complications for patients with brain injuries

The implants, developed by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, could be used to monitor patients with traumatic brain injuries. The researchers believe they can build similar absorbable sensors to monitor activity in organ systems throughout the body. Their findings are published online in Nature.

“Implants placed in the body often trigger an immune response, which can be problematic for patients,” said co-first author Rory K. J. Murphy, MD, a neurosurgery resident at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. “The benefit of these new devices is that they dissolve over time, so you don't have something in the body for a long time period, increasing the risk of infection, chronic inflammation and even erosion through the skin or the organ in which it's placed.”

Murphy is interested in monitoring pressure and temperature in the brains of patients with traumatic brain injury. When patients with such injuries arrive in the hospital, doctors need to measure intracranial pressure in the brain and inside the skull because an increase in pressure can lead to further brain injury. Furthermore, there is no way of reliably estimating pressure levels from brain scans or clinical features in patients.