No, please, invent a better valve. The valves return no data and give no feedback so, typically, the only way to know a valve is malfunctioning is for the patient to become symptomatic. I say "typically" because you can see more fluid accumulate in the ventricles via MRI or CT and there was a recent paper published where they put an ice cube on the shunt tubing and a thermometer a few inches lower to see if there's any CSF flow along the tubing but I'm not sure anyone is doing that in practice.
I think because it usually isn't a life-or-death situation when there's a shunt malfunction there's little effort put in to making them better.
I believe the statistic is that 50% of shunt placements fail within two years. Adjustments happen when a patient is symptomatic but imaging appears normal and after an MRI to verify that the setting hasn't changed.
2girls1netcup46 karma
No, please, invent a better valve. The valves return no data and give no feedback so, typically, the only way to know a valve is malfunctioning is for the patient to become symptomatic. I say "typically" because you can see more fluid accumulate in the ventricles via MRI or CT and there was a recent paper published where they put an ice cube on the shunt tubing and a thermometer a few inches lower to see if there's any CSF flow along the tubing but I'm not sure anyone is doing that in practice.
I think because it usually isn't a life-or-death situation when there's a shunt malfunction there's little effort put in to making them better.
I believe the statistic is that 50% of shunt placements fail within two years. Adjustments happen when a patient is symptomatic but imaging appears normal and after an MRI to verify that the setting hasn't changed.
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