Research Grant Awarded

Column of Hope is pleased to announce that Phase 1 of our efforts to define the technical outcomes required to achieve successful Chiari surgery is underway with a contract executed last week!

A US $94,000 grant has been awarded to Dr. Marcus Stoodley’s team at Macquarie University and Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney.

After 18 years of working with, and funding, basic scientific research with this team, they have taken the knowledge gained in the lab and refined their techniques in the operating room. These refinements have achieved consistently positive surgical results for syringomyelia, the Chiari headache and brain fog resolution. Those in the Chiari malformation & syringomyelia community know all too well that the current state of surgery produces far too many failed, or marginally successful, surgeries. At Column of Hope, we believe we are on the path to correcting that situation.

Phase 1 will focus on providing the surgical community with the technical measurements required to resolve a patient’s syrinx by measuring the difference between failed and successful initial surgeries. Future phases will hopefully do the same for debilitating Chiari headaches and brain fog. Solutions to these issues have eluded scientists and surgeons for 480 years. At Column of Hope, we hope, and even dare, to believe that we are finally at the precipice of solving these issues for as many as 6,000 more American patients per year, and even more worldwide.

Column of Hope is grateful for its donors and volunteers who have allowed us to help achieve this success at one surgical center and hopefully will help us learn how to duplicate that success in all the world’s surgical centers!