Radiology: Into the Brain's Labyrinth

Doctors were proud when they devised ways of using magnets to extract iron and steel objects from patients—usually nails and safety pins from children's gullets or stomachs. Now they are carrying the idea much farther by inserting magnets to get at hitherto inaccessible parts of the human body.

One of the most formidably inaccessible places is the labyrinth of arteries inside the brain. But at the latest meeting of the American Roentgen Ray Society, Dr. Sadek K. Hilal demonstrated a catheter with a magnetic tip that "swims" through small and tortuous arteries and can be guided to the exact spot...

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