Iraqi girl undegoes surgery for congenital defect

New Delhi: An eight-month-old baby girl from Iraq was successfully cured of life-threatening wrong connections in the brain. The patient had a huge swelling in her brain that was restricting complete blood flow inside her brain, which could have been fatal, if not treated on time.

The baby, suffering from congenital Arterio-Ven-ous Fistula (AVF), used to cry a lot since birth and had been taken to many hospitals in Iraq. Her MRI revealed a big swelling in the brain blood vessel but was denied treatment due to the small age as the procedure becomes risky when the child is growing well.

Soon when her growth was getting delayed and the brain was not developing normally, she was brought to Artemis Hosp-ital in Gurgaon, for a second opinion.

“Upon getting through the history of the patient, a detailed investigation was done wherein the MRI reports revealed a big swelling in the brain that was pressing the most critical area of the brain. The swollen blood vessel had caused shrinkage in the rest of the brain due to lower blood flow and changes in the brain pressure, which was hindering with her overall development,” said Dr Vipul Gupta, Director, Neuroin-tervention, Artemis Hosp-ital. An angiography was performed to see for the reason of swelling and the way to treat it simultaneously, he added.

Due to wrong connections, the blood was directly being supplied to the veins at a very high pressure, which caused the swelling. The team decided to close it in the same sitting using the embolisation technique.

“A very small tube of less than 1mm thickness kno-wn as microcatheter was inserted from the leg blood vessels was taken to the site of abnormal connection and rings of platinum known as coils were pla-ced slowly to block off the connection while preserving the blood flow in rest of the brain,” said Dr Raj Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Neurointerventionist fro-m the team.

Congenital defect can cause delayed growth and affect the child’s quality of life.