Israel’s Top Hospital Innovates To Treat War-Related Head Trauma

Faced with a growing number of head trauma cases due to the ongoing violence triggered by Hamas terrorism, medical professionals in Israel’s largest hospital are innovating – including with the use of artificial intelligence – to help treat its victims. 

Thousands of people were wounded when Hamas terrorists from Gaza infiltrated into Israel’s border communities on October 7, massacring more than 1,400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The attacks were accompanied by a barrage of rocket fire across the country that has not let up in the almost two weeks since. 

And while the doctors of the Sheba Medical Center are used to treating millions of patients with diverse conditions every single year, many of their new cases have complex brain injuries that cannot be tended to by conventional means. 

The Center’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, which normally treats patients suffering from strokes, aneurysms and brain bleeds, is now modifying existing medical techniques to cope with the new cases. 

“Each case is very unique and is very different from the patients that we usually treat,” Dr. Gal Yaniv, director of the hospital’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, tells NoCamels.

Suffering from head trauma due to gunshot wounds, rocket shrapnel or falling debris, many of these patients have developed a brain aneurysm – an abnormal bulge in a blood vessel of their brains that is at risk of rupturing.

Brain aneurysms are usually the result of blood vessels weakening with age or a genetic defect, and are more common in people over the age of 40. If not detected in time, they may cause bleeding inside the patient’s brain, which can be fatal.

These new cases, however, are occurring in soldiers fighting on the frontlines and civilians in the south of the country who have been most impacted by the ongoing war.

Dr. Yaniv explains that unlike conventional brain aneurysms, these aneurysms are now appearing in small arteries that are so delicate that they can rupture during surgery.

He and his team have therefore modified the tools used to treat other vascular diseases that involve small blood vessels – such as coronary microvascular disease – in order to perform these time-sensitive operations.

“We’re probably one of the more experienced medical centers in Israel, but these are some of the most difficult aneurysm cases we have encountered,” explains Dr. Yaniv. 

“They’re much more dangerous than normal aneurysms, and we’re very confined by the way we can treat them,” he says.

“So we have been improvising during each case, and are trying to understand how we can treat this patient without causing them any additional damage.” 

Aside from its Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, Sheba Medical Center has streamlined the process of hospitalizing and tending to patients in urgent condition, as the number of soldiers and civilians wounded by the ongoing war rises. 

The hospital has also integrated advanced artificial intelligence algorithms into its medical systems that are capable of analyzing X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds. They can also quickly flag brain aneurysms, as well as other serious conditions. 

These algorithms, which were developed by Israeli startup Aidoc, notify practitioners as soon as they spot a medical anomaly, and are much faster and more accurate than a radiologist.

Until now, staff at Sheba had to manually analyze the scans themselves, which Dr. Yaniv says has resulted in clinicians missing or delaying a diagnosis.

“This is extremely important because when you have such a huge flow of work both for the radiologist and the clinician – especially now – sometimes really serious pathologies can be missed, just because of the sheer amount of patients and scans,” says Dr. Yaniv, who is also the Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc. 

Due to the war, the Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit has seen a significant uptick in the number of patients it has had to treat. These AI tools have been crucial in treating these patients, as Dr. Yaniv says his team now has less time to treat patients who need care unrelated to the conflict.

“We’re used to treating emergencies, because we treat strokes and bleeds. But most of our time right now is dedicated to these trauma patients,” says Dr. Yaniv. 

“But like everyone in Israel right now, we’re trying to be busy and productive.”

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