Home Diseases and Conditions Cerebral Cavernous Malformations

Cerebral Cavernous Malformations

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Development Stage

Early Stage

Focused ultrasound research is in the laboratory phase and is not yet available for patients.

Clinical Trials

Focused ultrasound for this condition is being researched in clinical trials.

International Approval

Focused ultrasound is approved to treat this condition outside the US. Patients can seek commercial treatment at participating international sites.

FDA Approved

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved focus ultrasound for this condition. Patients can seek commercial treatment at participating sites.

Early Stage

Clinical Trials

International

FDA Approved

Focused ultrasound research for this condition is in the laboratory phase and is not yet available for patients.

Focused Ultrasound Therapy

Focused ultrasound is a noninvasive, therapeutic technology with the potential to improve the quality of life and decrease the cost of care for patients with cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs), which are also called “cavernomas”. This novel technology focuses beams of ultrasound energy precisely and accurately on targets deep in the brain without damaging surrounding normal tissue.

How it Works
Where the beams converge, focused ultrasound produces precise ablation (thermal destruction of tissue), which may enable CCMs to be treated without surgery.

Advantages
The primary options for treatment of CCMs include surgery or observation. However, for deep brain CCMs, surgery is likely to result in neural injury due to the retraction required to access the CCM.

For certain patients, focused ultrasound could provide a noninvasive alternative to surgery with less risk of complications – such as surgical wound healing or infection – at a lower cost. It can also be repeated, if necessary.

Clinical Trials

At the present time, there are no clinical trials recruiting patients for focused ultrasound treatment of CCMs.

Preclinical Research

A study at University of Virginia will treat animal models for CCMs in a project entitled “Focused ultrasound for treatment of deep-seated cerebral cavernous malformations.”

The Foundation updates these pages regularly, but with the increasing number of clinical trials, we want to be sure that our audience has the latest information available. Therefore, we also added the website search information for the above trials. If you click here, it will take you to the latest information available from https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/. 

Regulatory Approval and Reimbursement

Focused ultrasound treatment for CCM treatment is not yet approved by regulatory bodies or covered by medical insurance companies.

Notable Papers

Pruitt R, Gamble A, Black K, Schulder M, Mehta AD. Complication avoidance in laser interstitial thermal therapy: lessons learned. J Neurosurg. 2017 Apr;126(4):1238-1245. doi: 10.3171/2016.3.JNS152147. Epub 2016 Jun 3.

Click here for additional references from PubMed.