An eight-year-old boy suffering from a rare condition called 'nasal encephalocele' got a new lease of life after doctors at a private hospital performed a unique surgery to remove brain matter hanging into his nose.
An 'encephalocele' is a rare congenital disorder where the bones of a baby’s skull do not close completely in the mother’s uterus. The condition made the brain grow down through a crack in the skull into the boy Misbah Syed’s nose.
This later created an opening through which brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid protruded out of the head in a sac-like structure and impacted the boy’s life. The condition had obstructed the boy’s vision and had completely deformed his nose and face.
The condition also posed a huge risk of brain infection to the patient. Besides, the boy also had a cleft lip, palate, and swelling inside the mouth, said Ravi Gopal Varma, Lead Consultant Neurosurgeon and Chief of Neuro Sciences at Aster CMI Hospital where the surgery was done.
“It was a complex surgery and lasted for over six hours. The boy’s brain had descended down as a pouch and the bone between his brain and the eye was deficient. Even though there was no impact on his brain activity as yet, there were chances that this encephalocele could rupture resulting in a life-threatening situation for the boy,” the doctor said.
A team of doctors from the hospital opened his skull and then retracted his brain back. They isolated the normal brain from the sac of non-functioning brain matter that hung from his face. They then placed an artificial bone between the two eyes and another bone on that to ensure that the brain does not fall again into the nasal cavity.
In the next stage, the cleft lip was repaired and he was put under speech therapy, said Prateek P. Nayak, Consultant, ENT Surgery, at the hospital.
“The cleft lip and cleft palate made the surgery very unique and challenging because, while reconstructing, we had to save a lot of blood supply to the nose. The child was earlier breathing through his mouth because the swelling had prevented him from breathing properly through his nose but post-surgery his speech, swallowing, and breathing has improved,” the doctor added.
