Calcutta: An eight-year-old boy from Dhanbad suffered a cerebral stroke after his parents failed to recognise a warning sign for a disorder related to blood flow.
Manish Kumar Singh was discharged on Thursday nearly two weeks after a brain surgery at AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria here.
Manish had a seizure in sleep one and a half year ago. He woke up and started shrieking, complained of severe headache and was unable to recognise his parents for a while.
The next time a similar seizure happened was on August 10, when the child suffered a stroke.
"The child was suffering from a condition called arteriovenous malfunction (AVM), in which blood from an artery directly enters a vein, bypassing the brain tissues. The pressure of blood flow is usually many times more in arteries than in veins. In such conditions the wall of the vein can rupture, leading to haemorrhage," said R.N. Bhattacharya, director, neurosciences, AMRI Hospitals Dhakuria.
The incidence of brain stroke in children below 10 years is two to five per cent of all strokes. But doctors are of the opinion that parents need to be aware about the possibility so that they can seek medical help at the earliest.
"The telltale signs of AVM are throbbing headaches, epileptic fits, hearing strange sounds in the head as well as confusion or blurred vision, depending on the function of the portion of the brain where the problem occurs. The seizure Manish had one-and-a-half years ago could have been because of AVM," said Bhattacharya.
Neurosurgeon L.N. Tripathy said 85 per cent of brain strokes happened in people aged 45 or more, which is why people normally do not associate seizures in children with the possibility.
According to doctors, AVM is detected in three-six of every one lakh children. Haemorrhage happens in only some of them and that too in old age, when the blood vessels lose their elasticity. But if the condition is severe, as it was in Manish's case, stroke can happen in childhood as well.
The first time the boy had a seizure, his parents - father Upendra Kumar is a professor of applied geophysics at IIT(ISM) and mother Anamika a homemaker - had thought the child had a nightmare. The next day the child was back to normal.
On August 10, he had a seizure for a second time after dinner. All the earlier symptoms recurred - he complained of headache and failed to recognise his parents. He gradually lost his speech and became drowsy.
During the four-hour surgery at AMRI, the boy went through entailed clipping off an artery in a tangle of blood vessels in a portion of the brain that controls speech and cognition. Blood was spilling directly from the artery into a vein.
"He is steadily recovering. There is a bit of weakness on his right side, but that should go away. His parents have been asked to bring him back for evaluation after three months," said Dr Bhattacharya.
