Epileptic 4-year-old cured in rare surgery
Can look forward to rejoining school
Thanks to doctors at Jaslok hospital, four-year-old Atharva, who till recently was taken by at least six epilepsy seizures a day, can look forward to rejoining school soon.
It was on last Tuesday that Atharva underwent an eight-hour marathon surgery, in which four parts of his brain had to be disconnected in order to cure him of what is known as intractable epilepsy, an unusual case that requires a special surgical procedure.
According to his father Nilesh Ahwad, Atharva had to stop going to school after frequent seizures began making him very sleepy. “We went to several doctors, who over the past two-year period administered him four types of anti-convulsion drugs, which would leave him dull and sleepy, But the seizures returned and nothing seemed to work until he was finally operated at Jaslok,” added Ahwad.
Born as a full-term caesarian baby, Atharva suffered from his first episode of seizure only on the third day, forcing doctors at the hospital to shift him to the neonatal ICU. “However, the seizures returned when he was one-and-a-half years old and ever since he was two, he has been having attacks off and on,” said Nilesh, an auto-rickshaw driver. Atharva had to undergo seven levels of testing, to confirm the focus of epilepsy, before being taken up for the surgery.
Dr Paresh Doshi, stereotactic and functional neurosurgeon who operated on Atharva, said, “The kind of epilepsy that this child suffered from required a specific procedure called hemispherotomy surgery. Hemispherotomy is offered to children with refractory seizures arising from one hemisphere of the brain, particularly if there is already a suggestion of impaired function of that hemisphere (such as weakness of the opposite side of the body). In this case, his right side was becoming dysfunctional, which meant the left side of the brain was affected and we needed to operate on it.”
Can look forward to rejoining school
Thanks to doctors at Jaslok hospital, four-year-old Atharva, who till recently was taken by at least six epilepsy seizures a day, can look forward to rejoining school soon.
It was on last Tuesday that Atharva underwent an eight-hour marathon surgery, in which four parts of his brain had to be disconnected in order to cure him of what is known as intractable epilepsy, an unusual case that requires a special surgical procedure.
According to his father Nilesh Ahwad, Atharva had to stop going to school after frequent seizures began making him very sleepy. “We went to several doctors, who over the past two-year period administered him four types of anti-convulsion drugs, which would leave him dull and sleepy, But the seizures returned and nothing seemed to work until he was finally operated at Jaslok,” added Ahwad.
Born as a full-term caesarian baby, Atharva suffered from his first episode of seizure only on the third day, forcing doctors at the hospital to shift him to the neonatal ICU. “However, the seizures returned when he was one-and-a-half years old and ever since he was two, he has been having attacks off and on,” said Nilesh, an auto-rickshaw driver. Atharva had to undergo seven levels of testing, to confirm the focus of epilepsy, before being taken up for the surgery.
Dr Paresh Doshi, stereotactic and functional neurosurgeon who operated on Atharva, said, “The kind of epilepsy that this child suffered from required a specific procedure called hemispherotomy surgery. Hemispherotomy is offered to children with refractory seizures arising from one hemisphere of the brain, particularly if there is already a suggestion of impaired function of that hemisphere (such as weakness of the opposite side of the body). In this case, his right side was becoming dysfunctional, which meant the left side of the brain was affected and we needed to operate on it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment