Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center prides itself on driving innovation in all aspects of the medical industry. From working with artificial intelligence to utilizing new surgical treatments, these healthcare professionals are setting new standards and discovering ways to advance the field as a whole.

Bringing Applied Artificial Intelligence to Stroke Care
Machine learning is making its way into the medical field to reduce the time spent triaging patients. Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center is a part of this movement by being the first in the Greater Houston area to partner with Viz.ai and utilize their AI software. This technology analyzes images for suspected large vessel occlusion strokes.

As a leader in stroke care, Baylor St. Luke's is enhancing the power of their stroke care team by bringing in artificial intelligence. Viz.ai’s software can be life-changing by saving critical minutes, or even hours, in the triage, diagnosis, and treatment of strokes.

Surgical Treatment for Neck Pain: The FUSE Study
Baylor St. Luke's, in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine, is swinging into action by jumping in on a clinical trial focused on examining a new technique to treat high-risk patients with degenerative disc disease. This disease is an age or injury-related condition that happens when one or more vertebrae in the spinal column herniate or break down. Traditionally treated with invasive surgery, the clinical trial examines a new minimally invasive surgical treatment that is tissue-sparing and reduces blood loss and muscle disruption.

Revolutionizing Pituitary Tumor Treatment and Removal
Their neurosurgeons offer a new multidisciplinary approach that combines patient management protocol with a less-invasive endonasal surgical technique to safely discharge over 90% of pituitary surgery patients after just one night in the hospital.

The Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center team has built a legacy of advancing the standard of care with pain-free solutions by being the first in Houston to use CyberKnife technology, which combines intelligent robotics and precise image guidance.

Using Deep Brain Stimulation To Treat Depression
Baylor St. Luke’s doctors are researching how deep brain stimulation — typically used to treat Parkinson’s and essential tremors — can address treatment-resistant depression. Experts have pinpointed areas in the brain that could benefit from stimulation, particularly the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS). By placing electrodes in these two areas, researchers hope to increase responsiveness to external stimuli as well as maintain a steady state of excitement.

“The proposed studies will investigate the feasibility and safety of using a next-generation DBS system, the Boston Scientific Vercise DBS system, to ‘steer’ stimulation simultaneously to two different brain regions implicated in treatment-resistant depression that may lead to new and better treatments for this and other severe neuropsychiatric disorders,” said Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center neurosurgeon Dr. Sameer Sheth, associate professor of neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine and one of the principal investigators of the deep brain stimulation for depression clinical trial.

Epilepsy Treatment With the NeuroPace RNS System
Since 2014, Baylor St. Luke's has been treating patients with epilepsy and partial-onset seizures (POS) with the FDA-approved NeuroPace® RNS® System, the only device that monitors and responds to brain activity to prevent seizures before they start.

After being implanted, the device monitors the brain’s electrical activity, detects abnormalities indicative of seizure onset, and emits small electrical pulses to normalize brain activity and prevent the seizure from occurring. Patients have experienced a significant reduction in seizures and improved quality of life.