PUNE: A 35-year-old shepherd got a severe headache while he took his goats to a pasture. Soon, he started feeling dizzy and fell down hitting his head against a rock and injuring himself severely.
There was scant chance of his survival. However, thanks to precious efforts of the doctors from the Aditya Birla Hospital, the patient recovered from the life-threatening injury.
Passers-by rushed him to a nearby hospital, where primary treatment was immediately started. However, the patient was shifted to the Emergency Centre of Aditya Birla Hospital due to lack of advanced facilities locally.
The 35-year-old was unconscious when shifted to the Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital.
Dr Rahul Patil, the neuro-surgeon who treated him, said, “The victim's condition was very critical when he was brought to our hospital. We immediately did a brain scan to understand the condition. The initial scan revealed that there was internal bleeding due to brain injury. However, the location of the bleeding was not typical of head injury. There was so much bleeding that it was difficult to understand the condition of the blood vessel. Hence, we did a special scan of blood vessel specifically.”
He added there was severe damage to the left posterior cerebral artery (blood vessel) of his brain.
“The blood vessel had an abrupt cut-off further leading to brain damage due to dissecting Aneurysm rupture (balloon like bulge in the blood vessel which bursts releasing blood in the space around brain),” Dr Patil added.
Doctors said the patient had slipped into coma. Due to hemorrhage, the brain had gone into herniation that is, there was tremendous pressure, which was being built inside the brain, which could result in the cut-off and shut down of the blood supply to brain causing permanent damage to cardiac and the respiratory centre any time. The patient was rushed into an emergency life saving de-compressive brain surgery i.e. open brain surgery, which lasted four hours. The patient underwent a definitive surgery in the form of coiling for dissecting aneurysm after 13 days.
Dr Patil said this was an extremely rare case and the chances of survival were just one per cent.
“We had explained it to the family members before undertaking the patient for the first surgery. We reduced the brain pressure and completed the surgery. This case was so rare that it has also been presented to the Neuro-surgical Association of Pune,” said Dr Patil.
The patient was on a ventilator support initially for a week. He was in the ICU for three months. Once his condition stabilised, he was shifted to the ward. His total recovery time was around four-and-a-half months.
