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A brain aneurysm- “the ticking time bomb”
A brain aneurysm is a bulge or ballooning of a blood vessel in the brain most times in deep and technical areas. It often looks like a berry hanging on a stem.
Brain aneurysm
These aneurysms can leak or rupture, causing bleeding into the brain (haemorrhage stroke). Most often, a ruptured brain aneurysm occurs in the space between the brain and thin tissues covering the brain. This type off haemorrhagic stroke is called a subarachnoid haemorrhage.
When ruptured, the fatality is very high, because 40% of cases when an aneurism ruptures the patients die, and 15% of them actually die before they receive any medical attention. Sixty percent of them who survive suffer from neurological deficit.
Complications: when aneurysms rupture, the bleeding usually last for a few seconds. The blood can cause direct damage to surrounding cells, and the bleeding can damage or kill other cells, and it also increases pressure inside of the skull. Complications can develop after the rupture can include: re-bleeding, vasospasm, hydrocephalus, hyponatremia.
Most brain aneurysms, however, don’t rupture, but they do create health problems or cause symptoms. These aneurysms are often detected during tests for other symptoms. Treatment for an unruptured aneurysm may be appropriate in some cases and may prevent a rupture in the future.
Symptoms for a ruptured aneurysm: A sudden severe headache is the key symptom, and this headache is usually described by the patients as the “worst headache” ever experienced. Common signs and symptoms include nausea and vomiting, a stiff neck, blurred or double vision, sensitivity to light, seizure, loss of consciousness, confusion, dropping eyelids.
In some cases, an aneurysm may leak a slight amount of blood. This leaking, or sentinel bleed can also cause a sudden and extremely serve headache.
Unruptured aneurysm: These may produce no symptoms, especially if it is small. However, a larger unruptured one may press on brain tissues and nerves, possibly causing; pain above and behind one eye, a dilated pupil, change in vision or double vision, numbness of one side of the face.
Risk factors: A number of factors can contribute to weakness in an artery wall and increase the risk of a brain aneurysm or rupture. Brain aneurysms are more common in adults than in children and more common in women than in men.
Risk factors that develop over time are: older age, cigarette smoking, high blood pressure (hypertension), drug abuse (particularly the use of cocaine) and heavy alcohol consumption.
Risk factors presented at birth: Selected conditions that date to birth can be associated with an elevated risk of developing the aneurysm. These include inherited by connective tissue disorder, polycystic kidney disease, abnormally narrow aorta, cerebral arteriovenous malformation or a family history of brain aneurysm.
Guyana recently performed, for the first time, a minimal invasive brain aneurysm with a 56-year-old patient. Guyana’s lone neurosurgeon Amarnauth Dukhi and his team executed a successful surgery on the woman she was discharged from the hospital.
She’s expected to live a normal life with daily activities.
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