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Brain Aneurysms
What are Brain Aneurysms?
Brain Aneurysm is a weak bulging area in an artery supplying the brain. Because its wall may be weak and thin, it has the risk of rupturing.
What if an Aneurysm Ruptures?
If an aneurysm ruptures, it will cause a serious type of intracranial bleed called Subarachnoid Hemorrhage (SAH), which has serious effects.
What are the Signs and Symptoms of Aneurysms?
It depends on whether an aneurysm is ruptured or un-ruptured. Ruptured brain aneurysms usually cause bleeding into the space around the brain and it causes following signs and symptoms all of a sudden.
- Sudden and severe headache, often described as ¨the worst headache of my life¨
- Nausea and vomiting
- Neck stiffness
- Blurred or double vision
- Seizures
- Loss of consciousness
- Confusion
- Weakness and/or numbness
Unruptured aneurysms usually have no symptoms. Rarely it may press on adjacent nerves and may cause following signs and symptoms.
- Blurred or double vision
- Drooping of eyelid
- Dilated pupil
- Weakness or numbness
What are the Causes or Risk Factors?
In most cases causes cannot be identified. However, following factors are associated with brain aneurysms
- Smoking
- Hypertension
- Age over 40
- Strong familial history – Genetic causes
- Infection
- Severe Head Trauma – post traumatic aneurysms
How to Diagnose Aneurysms?
It can be diagnosed with number of imaging techniques
A CT Scan will show if there has been bleeding in the brain. However, a basic CT brain does not show the cause of bleeding. CT Angiogram is a technique in which a contrast dye is injected into the bloodstream and brain´s vessels are highlighted. Sometimes to provide a better view Digital subtraction Angiography (DSA) may be needed. In DSA, a catheter is inserted via a vessel in the groin and it is navigated to the area of interest where dye is injected and images are taken and processed to get precise details. MRA (MR Angiogram) can be used sometimes to screen patients for aneurysms. Advantages of MRA are not exposing patients to any ionizing radiation.
How Brain Aneurysms are treated?
It can be broadly classified as
- Surgical clipping
- Endovascular management
- Surgical Clipping of Aneurysms: Clipping is an open surgical procedure to seal off an aneurysm at its neck and thus prevent blood from entering the aneurysm. Titanium aneurysm clips are used in surgery
Endovascular Management
Endovascular simply means within the blood vessel. Instead of open surgery, aneurysm is accessed via catheter inserted in an artery and aneurysms are obliterated by various devices like coils, stents, flow diversion devices, etc. Appropriate management in each patient will be decided on a case to case basis by various specialists.
Why MIOT?
- Renowned tertiary care hospital in India known for managing polytrauma patients
- Emergency door to super specialists in zero seconds
- Equipped to do micro neurosurgical procedures at any time of the day
- Interventional suite with biplanar cath lab for managing blunt vascular injuries
- State of the art exclusive Neuro critical ICU
- MIOT Rehab centre – 1st of its kind in South India for total rehabilitation care