Opération Enfant Soleil and The Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation are thrilled to announce the official opening of the first Intra-Operative MRI in the history of Canadian pediatric hospitals. This piece of equipment, coupled with an ultra modern operating room, forms The Children’s new Pediatric Interventional Brain Suite. To make this project a reality, Opération Enfant Soleil donated $5 million. The total cost of the project, made possible entirely thanks to private funding, is more than $10 million.

The Intra-Operative MRI is a highly specialized surgical imaging system that allows images of a patient to be taken during surgery – right in the operating room. Without this equipment, surgeons have to rely on static images taken prior to the procedure to guide them. However, during surgery “brain shift” often occurs, and cannot be predicted by the images taken prior to the operation. Now, with the new Intra-Operative MRI, The Children’s neurosurgery team has access to real-time images of the brain. “This equipment allows us to determine with greater accuracy than ever before, the extent of the tumour we are operating on. Now we know if we have successfully removed the entire tumour, while the patient is still in the operating room. If the images show that a part of the tumour remains, we continue the surgery. For our young patients, this will often mean that they only have to undergo a single surgery, and as a result, recovery time is much faster,” explains Dr. Jean-Pierre Farmer, Neurosurgeon and Surgeon-in-Chief at The Children’s.

In addition to being a state-of-the-art tool that allows The Children’s neurosurgeons to improve the treatment and recovery time of young patients, the Intra-Operative MRI will also permit researchers to undertake life-saving and life-changing research in autism, epilepsy, cerebral palsy and the development of premature babies. 

 
Exactly one week after surgery, Émilie proudly took part in the official unveiling ceremony of our new intra-operative MRI suite. She will always be remembered as the very first patient to have benefitted from our new intra-operative MRI suite. She is pictured here with Ms. Ginette Charest, President and executive director of Opération Enfant Soleil, (centre).