City neurosurgeon treats boy with largest-till-date brain aneurysm
| Date :27-Dec-2019 |
By Vikas Vaidya :
Considering poor financial condition of the 12-year-old patient’s family, the hospital bears full cost of treatment
A brain aneurysm is a bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain. It often looks like a berry hanging on a stem. A brain aneurysm can leak or rupture, causing brain stroke (haemorrhage) due to bleeding. It occurs mostly in children due to connective tissue disorders. Such cases are not uncommon all over the world. They are treated also by the surgeons. But this case was rare due to age of the patient. Nagpur’s Neurosurgeon treated the world’s biggest aneurysm and considering the poor financial condition of the patient’s family, the hospital did not charge a single penny. Yuvraj Pawar (12) from Chandrapur apparently was a normal boy till he was 8.
When he turned 8, his parents -- father (Dagdu) and mother -- observed that Yuvraj had head-on fall followed by left side weakness that lasted for almost one hour. They took him to a general physician who treated him. The parents observed Yuvraj falling every now and then. On keen observation, they found Yuvraj was experiencing seizures for a minute with left-side weakness for an hour. Yuvraj’s parents took him to several doctors most of whom gave symptomatic treatment. With anti-convulsants, Yuvraj had seizures at an approximate interval of 15 days. His parents continued treatment along with some occupational therapy. With growing age, Yuvraj’s frequency of symptoms also increased.
Finally, parents decided to approach higher Centre. They took Yuvraj to Neuron Hospital. During OPD, Dr Pramod Giri, noted Neurosurgeon, evaluated Yuvraj, who was conscious, oriented, having left side hemiparesis. Hence MRI of brain was done where it was identified, right parietal large areas of cystic lesion measuring 3.6 cm x 2.6 cm extending to the adjacent cortex and showing intense post contrast enhancement isolated with vessels may represent either aneurysm or large vascular malformation with large feeder arising from right MCA.
Yuvraj’s parents were counselled and informed everything regarding need of surgery. When they expressed their inability to bear the cost of treatment, Dr Giri and his team took a decision to provide the treatment free of cost. MRI Brain Angiography revealed the size of aneurysm -- 5.4x 3.7x 3.4 cm. According to the world literature, earlier size of aneurysm operated was 4.5 cm × 3 cm × 2 cm. The cases were in 2016, one in China and other in Orlando. Dr Giri told ‘The Hitavada’, “Aneurysm happens due to connective tissue disorders, blood arteries get loose and blood flow makes a bulge in the artery. After some time, either the artery gets ruptured causing death or leaves the patient suffer from several problems including seizures. The wall of artery becomes weak. In Yuvraj’s case, we not only deplete the balloon but also strengthened the wall. He will not have any problem at least with this artery.” Dr Giri attributes the credit of the success of the case to Dr Ishwar and Dr Kshitij for ward care, Dr Shivaji Deshmukh for anesthesia skill, Dr Manjusha Giri and Dr Sushant Admane for critical care and paediatric care.