Man, 20, with constant runny nose discovers his brain was poking out and ‘leaking’
DEALING with a runny nose can feel relentless.
No matter how many tissues you go through, sometimes it just keeps on coming.
For one 20-year-old man, this was his reality for six years – until doctors discovered the ‘snot‘ wasn’t snot at all, but brain fluid leaking from his skull.
The unidentified man from Syria had been battling a constant runny nose, along with headaches and seizures, ever since a head injury.
What he thought was simply a cold symptom turned out to be cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) – a clear fluid protecting the brain and spine.
He also had a portion of his brain protruding from the top of his nose.
The trouble started after the patient was in a car accident six years earlier.
Despite sustaining a head injury which left him suffering headaches, seizures and clear snot constantly streaming from his nose, he chose not to seek medical treatment.
After conducting brain scans, doctors diagnosed the man with traumatic encephalocele – a condition where brain matter escapes through openings in the skull, in this case, the nasal cavity.
Most cases of encephalocele are seen in newborn babies when a portion of the brain tissue protrudes from part of the skull which hasn’t formed properly.
It occurs in about in about one in 5,000 births, according to the Fetal Medicine Foundation.
In some cases, an encephalocele can develop after a head or brain injury, and it might not show up until years later, especially if the initial injury wasn’t treated.
Since traumatic encephaloceles are so rare, there aren’t any reliable statistics on how many cases occur each year.
Writing in the Journal of Medical Case Reports, doctors in Syria said 10 to 30 per cent of skull base fractures result in CSF leakage.
This can damage the brain’s blood supply and function since CSF cushions and protects the brain.
Surgery is needed to repair the rupture and seal any openings to prevent further leakage.
In the case of the Syrian patient, the man refused initial treatment for injuries when he was brought to the hospital after his car accident.
‘A rare and unexpected complication’
More recently, the man was hospitalised and treated in intensive care for meningoencephalitis, a life-threatening brain infection.
During his visit, an MRI revealed a skull-based fracture, which had let part of his brain seep into his nostril.
Doctors recommended surgery to repair the fracture, but the patient refused medical care.
When he came back for a follow-up two months later, the MRI still showed the same issue, so surgery was recommended again.
This time, the patient agreed, and the neurosurgeon performed an operation to put the tissue and matter that had leaked through his nasal cavity back where it belonged.
The doctor also repaired the damaged brain and used medical-grade cement and glue to reconstruct the base of the skull, which had been fractured.
The patient recovered well and was sent home two days later.
At a follow-up two months later, the MRI showed that the encephalocele was fully closed and any damage caused by the bulging matter had been reversed.
The man also stopped having headaches, a runny nose, and seizures.
Doctors in the case report warned that although a traumatic encephalocele is “a rare and unexpected complication of trauma,” doctors must evaluate patients for it “because of its life-threatening consequences.”
From a foetus removed from baby’s brain to man’s green ‘furry’ tongue, here are some bizarre medical reports
A 64-year-old woman in Taiwan spent days hearing beating, clicking and rustling sounds in her left ear, which were so bad she struggled to sleep.
This led her to visit an ear, nose and throat clinic, where doctors discovered a spider moving about her external auditory canal, the passageway that links the outside of the ear to the eardrum.
A scuba diver descending into an underwater cave developed a deadly blood syndrome called systemic capillary leak syndrome that caused fluid to leak out of his blood vessels.
After years of smoking, a 64-year-old man from Ohio developed a shockingly green, hairy tongue.
In an extremely rare case detailed in the journal Neurology, doctors surgically removed a feotus from the brain of a one-year-old.
The foetus was the child’s identical twin – it had come from the same fertilised egg and had also shared the same placenta, but developed in a separate amniotic sac.
A man, 48, was left with an excruciating infection after being bitten by a stray cat and he rushed to an emergency department in Cambridge after his hand started to swell.
After both his forearms went red and started to swell up and his fingers became agonisingly enlarged, baffled medics conducted tests and found he’d been infected with a previously unseen type of bacteria.
A man, 22, from Nepal got stitched up after being stabbed with a knife — but the next day, he learned that the nearly half-foot blade was still in his belly.
A day later, he went to the emergency department because he had mild, continuous pain in his lower left belly.