Leading medical experts in the US say that a new platinum-based treatment for aneurysms has proved extremely successful since its inception.

The new technique is called endovascular treatment, and involves threading a catheter through an artery leading to the aneurysm and implanting a platinum coil that blocks the weak part of the vessel wall.

Now the results from a new study into the procedure in the Journal of Neurosurgery suggest that this method is helping a growing number of patients to survive treatment that can often prove fatal.

Findings of the study revealed that an increasing number of hospitals were adopting the technique, with those who have gained some experience in the field now making good progress.

'One of the main points of the article is that, as is true in many things, the more a certain hospital does something, the better it is at it,' commented DeWitte Cross III, lead author of the study and director of interventional neuroradiology at Washington University Medical Centre in St Louis, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The study authors analysed treatment for more than 16,000 patients in 18 states including New Jersey and Pennsylvania.