Catheter threaded to brain French specialist gives city baby chance to live TORONTO (CP) - A Week-old Belleville baby, given a 10-per-cent chance of living, has gained a new chance for a future thanks to a French specialist flown in from Paris and a remarkable procedure using Krazy Glue. Jeremy Jonk, the son of Hans and < Sheila Junk of Sidney Street, was born with a blood vessel abnormality in his brain that was forcing his heart to work so hard it was failing. Dr. Pierre Lasjaunias, a world ex- pert on embolization (blocking blood vessels), arrived on Friday to help Toronto specialists in neuro- radiology from the Hospital for Sick Children and Toronto Western Hospital perform a special technique on Jeremy. It was the first time it had been done on such a young child. It involved threading through an artery in the child's leg to his brain a thread-fine catheter tipped with a balloon the size of a tear-drop from which glue leaked to seal off the ab- normal blood vessel. Lasjaunias said the tiny balloon "is like a sail carrying the catheter along as it is sucked through the blood vessel." When the balloon was in place in the brain, he said, "it spit glue into the fistula (the abnormal site)." Jeremy's parents visited their son and described him as "good -- when you think what he has been through." Lasjaunias said: "It is quite spec- tacular. But we have not yet saved the child's life. "We have gained time so the heart failure can be controlled medically until the next step can be done next Week." Lasjaunias said because the baby is so small, weighing just over eight pounds, the procedure has to be done in two steps with the second em- bolization set for next week. An exhausting day for the Jonks' began when they learned Lasjaunias was flying from Paris to help treat their son. The baby had been in inten- sive care in the Hospital for Sick Children since last Sunday when the serious illness was discovered. Jonk, a salesman, said Jeremy, the couple's second child, weighed nine pounds, 6¥4 ounces at birth but had been losing weight because he would not eat. Since their car had broken down, they had to borrow one to dash 150 kilometres to Toronto. Jeremy was transferred from Sick Kids' to Toronto Western, which has the special X-ray equipment re- quired and where Lasjaunias spent six months last year teaching the technique to Dr. Karel TerBrugge and Dr. Ming-Chi Chiu, neuro- radiologists. Dr. Sylvester Chuan, chief of neuro-radiology at Sick Kids, joined them with two anesthetists skilled in administering to small babies. Lasjaunais said the child's con- genital abnormality, at the junction of an artery and vein, caused blood under high pressure coming from the artery to bulge out of the vein. He said blood returning to the heart through the veins was flowing with such pressure, the heart muscle couldn't keep up and was growing weaker. At the same time, Lasjaunais said, the bulge on the vein kept increasing in size, intruding on soft brain tissue. After his arrival at 6 p.m. (EDT), Lasjaunais was rushed by police car to Toronto Western where the opera- tion took two hours. Immediately, the anesthetists monitoring the baby's vital signs could see the difference. The child's blood pressure went up and the bad effects of the failing heart on the liver disappeared. The baby was returned to the newborn intensive care unit at the Hospital for Sick Children shortly after treatment. "He was asleep when we saw him but he looks good, really good," said his mother, smiling.