Assessment of a balloon-tipped catheter modified for intracerebral convection-enhanced delivery.

Numerous improvements in the understanding of the biology of primary brain tumors have been reported. The resultant application of this information to the therapy of these lesions offers promising alternatives. For any of a number of reasons delivery of these therapies to the target neoplasm can be challenging. Convection enhanced delivery has been established as a modality that has been shown to circumvent some of the impediments to treatment agent delivery. This report described the preliminary preclinical use of a balloon tipped catheter with a channel built in for infusion of therapy directly into the brain. A series of 10 canines were studied using bolus and continuous infusions with the balloon either inflated or deflated. The infusates contained gadolinium to allow imaging of the convection process. The character of the cerebral penetration is described ranging from minimal cerebral penetration with uninflated balloons used with bolus injections to extensive bilateral penetration using inflated balloons and continuous infusions. This data demonstrates the feasibility and potential value of such a system and warrants a more detailed analysis of the device using a wider variety of infusion parameters, assessment of larger infusate molecule sizes likely to be solely dependent on convection and direct comparison to standard catheter convection techniques.