I-Corps: Cooling catheter to improve intracerebral hemorrhage recovery

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a cooling device to improve recovery after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). ICH is a devastating disease that occurs spontaneously or because of a wide range of pathologies and afflicts approximately 70,000 individuals per year in the US alone. Mechanical stress and destruction of cerebral tissue due to hematoma formation rapidly follows the hemorrhagic event and is associated with swelling of the neuronal tissue surrounding the site of injury. Studies on the therapeutic role of hypothermia after cardiac arrest and hypoxic brain events suggest a promising role in patients diagnosed with ICH. Unfortunately, currently available methods for decreasing temperature cannot provide a localized, sustained, and rapid cooling effect and have undesirable side effects such as pneumonia and septicemia. The proposed technology may overcome these limitations and provide an effective treatment and improve recovery for ICH patients. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a focal cooling device to treat intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). The proposed device is placed within the evacuation cavity following minimally invasive endoscopic ICH evacuation. The device may be placed and initiated during surgery, can remain operative for weeks, and can be removed without the need for additional surgery. The proposed approach is fundamentally different from current and traditional therapeutic hypothermia strategies that focus on systemic cooling by creating a device and deployment method that limits the area of temperature modulation to the area of injury and the immediate vicinity. The proposed device maximizes the neuroprotective properties of hypothermia via temperature reduction in the perihematomal region and may limit the complications associated with systemic hypothermia including shivering, coagulopathy, and infection. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.