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There are several clinical reasons for elevated intracranial pressure
(ICP) including hydrocephalus and severe head injury. The most
common is hydrocephalus known as a congenital or permanent enlargement
of the cerebrospinal fluid space in the brain due to the disruption
of fluid circulation.
To treat hydrocephalus, a shunt valve system is implanted diverting
an excessive amount of CSF from the central nervous system to
an internal delivery site for the purpose of diminishing elevated
ICP. There are about 125,000 individuals that have shunts in place
and over 25,000 shunt operations are performed each year in the
United States. Despite the enormous development in shunt-therapy
of hydrocephalus there are still significant complications associated
with the shunt such as over-drainage that often requires a revision
of the shunt. Continuous monitoring of ICP is desired to evaluate
the function of shunt systems over time. Although numerous experimental
techniques have been developed, there is currently no practical
way to measure shunt performance in vivo.
CMT develops an implantable telemetric pressure sensor system
with a highly stable capacitive absolute pressure sensor, signal
processing chip and telemetry unit. The implantable system is
powered wirelessly from an external remote device and is highly
miniaturised so that it can be implanted completely into the cranium
space.
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