A 25-year-old woman, who fell unconscious after suffering a brain haemorrhage, was successfully treated using a rare intervention technique at a hospital here, doctors said on Monday.
Heena Khan fell unconscious after suffering a severe headache accompanied by vomiting. Her family members rushed her to a local hospital and a brain CT scan revealed that she had had a haemorrhage in the fluid space around the brain, known as subarachnoid hemorrhage.
Magnetic Resonance (MR) Angiography revealed that one of the main blood vessels had swollen and burst. Heena was immediately referred to Medanta The-Medicity here since there was likelihood of another haemorrhage.
After analysing the entire situation, lead surgeon Vipul Gupta found that a blood vessel in the brain had ballooned and was completely damaged.
Gupta said: "In most cases of ballooning (aneurysm) of brain vessels, one can close the damaged swelling by coiling procedure while sparing the normal flow in the blood vessel. But in the present case, the main blood vessel itself was severely damaged."
The doctors, therefore, decided to perform a rare procedure -- known as brain aneurysm coiling -- to save the blood vessel and prevent more bleeding, by placing multiple stent in the main blood vessel so as to strengthen and provide a scaffolding to hold the coils in the ballooned portion.
Simultaneously, they placed metallic rings known as "coils" in the swollen part to prevent further bleeding. The doctors hoped that the overlapping stent would give time for natural healing to take place so as to have a normal-looking blood vessel in the patient.
Once the surgery was performed, the doctors checked the repair process by angiography after six weeks and observed that the healing process had repaired the blood vessel almost completely.
Heena made a slow but sure recovery from the effects of haemorrhage and is now living a normal life today, the doctors said.
