(190r) Inherent Variability in Inflammatory Response to Shunts in the Treatment of Hydrocephalus

While silicone catheters have vastly improved an array of medical treatments, reactions at the tissue-substrate interface often impede their functionality. In the treatment of hydrocephalus, delivering a silicone catheter to the frontal horn of the lateral ventricle provides an outsource for cerebrospinal fluid as well as an interface attractive to neuroglia. In this study, quantitative imaging approaches lead to the initial stages to develop a thorough understanding of how and why shunts fail. This response involves astrocytes and microglia, where astrocytes inherently follow patterns of shear flow, where microglia can form multilayers that invade the inlet holes of the shunt catheter. Heterogeneity across sample populations begs a correlation with patient clinical data, indicating that there may be an inflammatory trigger for shunt failure. Identification of proinflammatory cheomoattactants is also quantified. The results of this study provide a quantitative analysis of cell attachment to failed shunts used to treat hydrocephalus correlated to patient data in order to improve long-term implantation.