Mesa teen first in Arizona to receive innovative implant in skull after two strokes

Banner—University Medical Center Phoenix is the first in the state to offer an innovative implant for brain surgery patients that replaces a missing bone in a patient’s skull and acts as a window into the brain.

Longeviti’s ClearFit implant allows doctors to see the brain with an ultrasound, potentially reducing the need for regular scans post-surgery.

As a Mesa teenager has discovered, according to a release.

In February, Esli Neri Jacome woke up feeling weak on the day of her stroke. But the then-17-year-old didn’t think much of it.

“I thought I needed to eat something,” Esli recalls. “I went to make myself a sandwich, I tried to grab the toaster in the cabinet above the stove, but it was too heavy. My mom had to grab it for me.”

Esli didn’t feel any better after breakfast, but she thought a shower might change that.

“When I went to grab some shampoo and put it on my head, my left arm started to give out and I felt really, really weak,” Esli says. “I got scared, so I got out of the shower.”

She says when she tried to get dressed, her left leg gave out, so she crawled to the door and yelled for her mother. That’s when Esli’s mother called 911 and she was rushed to Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa.

At Banner Desert, she had another stroke due to a ruptured arteriovenous malformation, a rare tangle of blood vessels in the brain. She immediately went into emergency surgery, where part of her skull was removed to stop the swelling and bleeding.

“I felt scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” Esli said.

Esli was later released from the hospital and sent for follow-up care with Dr. Peter Nakaji at Banner - University Medical Center Phoenix.

The part of her skull removed in emergency surgery still needed to be replaced. In August, Dr. Nakaji performed a cranioplasty utilizing Longeviti’s ClearFit Custom Cranial Implant, which acts as a window directly into the brain. Esli is the first patient in Arizona to have this implant in her skull.

“The device is used to create a replacement for missing bone in the skull,” says Dr. Nakaji. “The advantage is that we can look through this device at the brain with an ultrasound, so we can see what is going on as often as we need to, without doing a full CT scan.”

It’s been several months since Dr. Nakaji placed the device in Esli’s skull, and she says she’s doing better.

“I am still recovering but I have progressed a lot from when I had my stroke,” says Esli, now 18. “I have gotten to the point where I can walk with my boot and cane. Dr. Nakaji was a major help in my recovery in doing my surgeries and helping me get back to my old life before this stroke.”

Banner—University Medical Center Phoenix is a teaching hospital that has provided medical care to Arizona and the Southwest since 1911. It is part of Banner—University Medicine, an academic medical network. Go to bannerhealth.com/universityphoenix.