2023-11-23 16:03:24
The incredible case of a 44-year-old patient in Marseille who has a pool of cerebrospinal fluid in place of the brain!
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A 44-year-old man presented to the Timone hospital in Marseille for weakness in his left leg which had persisted for two weeks. This day in 2007, the doctors surely had no idea that they had just encountered one of the most surprising patients of their career. With clumsy words, he tells them that he already had a problem with the same leg when he was 14 — it no longer moved properly. He also specifies that he has had several brain problems since he was a baby.
Bizarre patient: he lived with a tapeworm in his brain for 14 years
When fluid infiltrates the brain
Transferred to the neurology department of the hospital, the patient underwent an MRI MRI of the brain. The images are impressive! Unlike a normal brain, which occupies the majority of the available volume of the skull, his is pushed to the sides, occupying only a very small strip along the wall of the skull. The third and fourth ventricles as well as the lateral ventricle take up a disproportionate amount of space in the brain, filled with an abnormal quantity of cerebrospinal fluid.
For doctors, it is non-communicating hydrocephalus; a condition with which the patient was born and for which he underwent a first operation at the age of six months: the installation of a shunt. The shunt diverts excess fluid from the brain to the abdomen where it will be reabsorbed. A readjustment of this shunt relieved his leg when he was 14 years old.
Despite his unusual brain, the patient has a normal life. He is married with two children and works as a civil servant and has no neurological symptoms. His intellectual abilities are diminished, he has an IQ (a contested way of measuring an individual’s intelligence) of 75 when the average is around 90-100. After an operation which aims to facilitate the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid between the different parts of the brain, the condition of his leg improves. The patient was released from the hospital and continued his life… with a “swimming pool” in place of the brain.
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