November 21 , 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Tom Rosenberger, APR, Communications Department (513) 569-5260
CONTACT: Cindy Starr, MSJ, Communications Department (513) 584-2214

Mary Jo Giordullo: Blindness Averted Thanks to Pioneering Brain Surgery

At first Mary Jo Giordullo brushed aside the foggy vision in her left eye. She blamed it on aging. She blamed it on her contact lens.

"I'd say, this lens is driving me crazy. I'd take it out and clean it and put it back in."

Then one day, while wearing her glasses and unable to rub away the blur, she realized something was very wrong.

"When I had corrective lenses on and I should have been seeing clearly, my vision was distorted," recalled Mrs. Giordullo, who lives in Greater Cincinnati and works for a large investment firm. "It was like looking through a shower glass door, where it's not blurry, but it's kind of goofy looking. I thought I had a cold in my eye."

Mrs. Giordullo went to see her eye doctor, who quickly confirmed trouble.

"When she shone the light in my right eye, I could see a ball of light," Mrs. Giordullo said. "When she shone the light in my left eye, I'd see half of the circle. I didn't see a ball anymore. On the test for colorblindness, with my right eye I could see that the "8" was green inside a ball of red. But I couldn't see the "8" at all with my left eye."

Mrs. Giordullo was scheduled to see Dr. Karl Golnik, a neuro-ophthalmologist with the Cincinnati Eye Institute and The Neuroscience Institute, two days later. Five minutes into the exam, Dr. Golnik ordered an MRI. Within a week Mrs. Giordullo was in the office of Dr. John M. Tew, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic & Spine Institute and Medical Director of The Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Tew, who had reviewed Mrs. Giordullo's films and diagnosed her condition before meeting her, explained the difficult situation: a meningioma, a slow-growing tumor arising from a membrane that envelops the brain and spinal cord, was pressing on her optic nerve and causing her to go blind. The benign tumor, about the size of a golf ball, had begun growing around the carotid artery and had started to expand into the skull.

Removing the meningioma, along with some tiny pieces of affected skull, would take seven hours. Dr. Tew performed the complex operation with help from a new image-guided technology. In addition to using his own visualization and spacial skills, Dr. Tew used an "extra set of eyes" from BrainLAB's VectorVision, a global positioning system for the human body. VectorVision enabled Dr. Tew to track his surgical instruments and the meningioma by viewing three-dimensional computer images on a high-resolution screen.

"Then they put me back together, with staples in my head," Mrs. Giordullo said. "Dr. Tew saw me in the recovery room, and I was very alert, knew what day it was, how many fingers they were holding up. I was in the Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit for the first 24 hours, but I was able to take a shower by myself the day after surgery. I had surgery on a Friday and left the hospital on Monday."

Complete removal of the tumor was confirmed by a post-operative MRI. Because the tumor was removed in its entirety, Mrs. Giordullo did not have to endure radiation treatment.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Giordullo was walking two miles a day. Within six weeks she had returned to work and her normal fitness routine, which included power walking, cycling and strength training . Her eyesight improved 25 percent after the surgery but, regretfully, will not return to normal because of damage caused by the meningioma. Her right eye is destined to become her dominant eye. Mrs. Giordullo also will undergo periodic MRIs, in the event that some stray cell clusters cause the meningioma to recur.

"I feel 100 percent normal," Mrs. Giordullo said, five months after her surgery. "I feel so fortunate - fortunate that I had Dr. Tew as a surgeon and fortunate that I got to have my treatment so quickly. I have to tell you: from the moment I met Dr. Tew I was completely at ease. The day of surgery, I honestly wasn't scared. I told myself, you have to do it and you have the best. Just having a positive attitude helps. It doesn't hurt to feel in your heart that everything is going to be fine."