Brain haemorrhage patient, 60, gets new lease of life

Salem: A private hospital in the district has performed a endovascular aneurysm coiling on a brain haemorrhage patient successfully recently.
V Naganathan, 60, of Vembadithalam, approached the hospital on January 20, with severe headache. “His level of consciousness was dropping,” said Dr S P Goutham, endovascular neurosurgeon, VIMS hospital.
The doctor advised CT scan of the brain which revealed fresh bleeding (sub-arachnoid haemorrhage) in the cerebellum along with obstructive hydrocephalus.
Goutham and team then took the patient for emergency brain angiogram (cerebral DSA) which revealed an extremely rare disease of brain vasculature called “Posterior Inferior Cerebellar Artery dissecting pseudoaneurysm”.
After identifying the disease, Goutham decided to do an emergency endovascular procedure to prevent another episode of bleeding from the brain. Within a few hours, the patient underwent endovascular coiling for dissecting the pseudoaneurysm.
The patient was put on ventilator and monitored. The patient regained consciousness next morning.
“He was fit to go home on the fourth day of the procedure,” Goutham said.
This was the first time in western region of Tamil Nadu that such a complicated procedure was done successfully . Performed without opening the skull (craniotomy), it was done in a minimally invasive way by accosting a blood vessel in the thigh (femoral artery) and reaching the diseased blood vessel in the brain.
Medical director Dr K. Meenakshi Sundaram, dean Dr Sendil Kumar, and deputy medical director Dr Ashok appreciated the team. tnn