INTRACRANIAL ANEURYSM

INTRACRANIAL ANEURYSMS

I chose brain aneurysms as my blog due to the fact that I wanted to educated myself a bit more about this condition. When I was in the first grade my mother had a intracranial aneurysm that ruptured and we almost lost her. So here is my blog about intracranial aneurysms.

DESCRIPTION

A brain anuerysm is an abnormal bulging of one or more of the arteries within the brain. Most of the time brain aneurysms are not ever detected unless there are symptoms of an aneurysm and tests are performed to rule out an aneurysm or if the aneurysm has ruptured causing subarachnoid hemorrhaging.

SYMPTOMS

My mother said that she did not really notice any symptoms occurring before the aneurysm, but she did say that once the initial pain of it rupturing went away, she said that it was a huge release because the pressure was not so great. She does not remember anything after that. Some symptoms that could arise with a ruptured intracranial aneurysm would be nausea and vomiting, blurred vision or double vision, pain that is above and/or behind the eyes, dilated pupils, sensitivity to light and loss of sensation throughout the body.

Some symptoms for an intracranial aneurysm that has not ruptured would be short-term memory difficulty's loss of coordination and balance, speech difficulties, issues with thinking normally or processing problems and sudden changes in behavior.

TREATMENTS

There are usually two reasons for treatment. The first reason is that

there were findings of an intracranial aneurysm with the modalities of

CT or MRI and the patient has opted to take a course of action or there

is the incidence of a ruptured intracranial aneurysm and it is a life or

death situation and the patient needs to be taken to surgery

immediately to stop the bleeding and to stop the irreversible damage

that can occur to the brain.

One way of treatment is to do what is called "surgical clipping" and this is where there is a surgical clip that is inserted into the brain and that clip clamps off the aneurysm so that the patient will not bleed out. A second course of action, and this is only if the intracranial aneurysm has not burst is to do what is endovascular coiling. And these photos explain endovascular coiling very well. This is a non invasive procedure that can be performed under general fluoroscopy. A catheter will be inserted into the femoral artery and will then be lead to the brain where they can locate the aneurysm, block the aneurysm with lead coils, and cut off blood circulation to that weak point of the vessel for the prevention of an aneursym rupturing.