With your support
we are giving cardiac patients
a new chance at life

Leib Wagschal

Leib Wagschal is thankful for every moment with his family and wife Charlotte after to becoming the first heart patient in Canada to benefit from the Sentinel Cerebral Protection System.

After living through the horrors of Buchenwald, Leib Wagschal is thankful for every moment with his 19 grandchildren and great-grandchildren and his wife Charlotte (pictured left). But the 90-year-old Holocaust survivor is even more grateful than usual. Leib became the first person at Sunnybrook – and one of the first in Canada – to benefit from the Sentinel Cerebral Protection System.

The Sentinel protects against stroke during an endovascular procedure, such as a TAVI. Its small dual filter is designed to capture and remove plaque or debris that could travel up to the brain. It is inserted using a catheter from the patient’s wrist artery and positioned with X-ray guidance. Once the TAVI is in place, the Sentinel is removed.

Leib was rushed to Sunnybrook after he collapsed while walking to synagogue. “I just dropped, in the middle of the road,” he says. Following a short stay in the hospital for his procedure, Leib was able to return home to his loving wife Charlotte.

A lifelong baker, Leib is thankful he is well enough to return to making challah and other pastries for his family – and for having the chance to make such a safe, happy life in Canada in the first place. “If somebody had come to me when I was 12 years old in Buchenwald, and told me that one day I would be married and have children, I would have thought it was impossible.” says Leib

An international trial testing the Sentinel’s effectiveness is underway. “We’ve also decided to study this ourselves and to use the devices in those at highest risk of stroke following a TAVI,” says Dr. Sam Radhakrishnan, medical director of the TAVI program. Patients with a history of stroke or significant calcium burden represent about 15 per cent of the TAVI patients treated at Sunnybrook.

Approximately 20 Sunnybrook patients with these indications have received a TAVI with the Sentinel since 2020 and like Lieb, all have had positive outcomes,

Together we can accelerate the understanding, treatment and care of brain disorders

By 2020, brain disorders are expected to be the leading cause of death and disability in Canada. We aim to change this.

Sunnybrook’s Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program is taking the lead in solving the biggest threats to brain health: stroke, dementia and mental illness.

We are unique amongst Canadian brain sciences programs. Some programs address mental illness alone, some conduct only research, some provide only clinical care and some focus on one specific age group. We are the only program that brings all of this together into one fully integrated effort.

We are building the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Centre to be a hub for patient care research and teaching. It will be a centre where collaboration among our brain sciences experts will spark new discoveries and bring new innovative treatments to patients sooner.

Here’s how:

Unprecedented collaboration across disciplines – brain disorders will not be understood by just one medical specialty

Our neurologists work alongside psychiatrists. Our neurosurgeons work alongside brain imaging specialists. Our psychiatrists work alongside pharmacologists.

Why? Because each specialty teaches us lessons about the others, thereby accelerating research that will return patients to their families faster and healthier than before.

Care throughout the lifespan – from adolescence to the senior years

Our experts from the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program care for people at all stages of life. Most discoveries made in one age group translate to the others, ultimately impacting all ages.

Integrating psychiatry and the other brain sciences

By integrating psychiatry and the other brain sciences, we take psychiatry out of the shadows and shine a light of understanding on it. Mental illness should be treated like any other medical condition.

Embedding research in patient care

Uniting research with patient care means patients receive new treatments sooner. Our ultimate goal is to improve outcomes and restore patients to health as quickly as possible.

Our aim is to provide the clinical care, research, leadership and education needed to confront one of the largest health threats of our time: disorders of the brain. We have the teams in place. We have the expertise. And we have the technology.

Now, we need the community’s help in creating a new centre that will accelerate the understanding, treatment and care of people with brain disorders.

Watch: Learn more about the centre from patients and Sunnybrook brain specialists

Download more information