Brain Surgery: Types, Dangers & Advantages
Brain surgery is used to treat conditions like epilepsy, leaky blood arteries, and tumors in the brain. The brain must be cut during some surgeries, such as craniotomy, while other techniques are less intrusive. Surgery is carefully planned by your doctor to prevent harming the parts of the brain that regulate vital activities like speaking and moving.
What is brain Surgery?
Any technique that treats a brain anomaly is considered brain surgery. A component of your central nervous system is the brain. Your ability to speak, move, think, and remember is under its control. Surgery on the brain seeks to correct issues without impairing these critical processes.
A surgeon performing brain surgery may remove a portion of your brain or abnormal development, such as a tumor. Moreover, surgeons can fix damaged areas of your brain like blood vessel leaks. Such as Brain Tumor Surgery.
A cut or incision must occasionally be made in the brain during brain surgery. Yet, numerous methods can enter your nose, mouth, or even a tiny cut in your leg to access your brain. Compared to open brain surgery, minimally invasive brain surgery has fewer dangers and hastens recovery.
Who requires brain surgery?
You might require brain surgery for a variety of reasons, including:
· vascular abnormalities (abnormal connections between arteries and veins).
· Aneurysms (a bulge in a weaker section of an artery) (a bulge in a weakened part of an artery).
· clots of blood.
· Tumors.
· Parkinson’s disease and other degenerative diseases.
· Epilepsy.
· traumas to the head, such as skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).
· Haemorrhages (bleeding in the brain or head) (bleeding in the brain or head).
· nerve harm.
· Stroke.
· fluid accumulation, including hydrocephalus.
What varieties of brain surgery are there?
Brain surgery comes in a variety of forms. Among the most typical are:
· Brain biopsies: are performed to examine a tissue or fluid sample from the brain, typically to determine the cancerousness of a tumor. A needle may be inserted into your brain by a medical professional during a stereotactic (computer-guided) needle biopsy to get a sample. Or they could perform open surgery and remove some tissue (craniotomy).
· Craniotomy: Open brain surgery is known as craniotomy. To access your brain, a surgeon must remove a portion of your skull, which must then be replaced after the procedure. To remove a tumor, blood clot, arteriovenous malformation, epileptic tissue, or to relieve pressure on your brain, you might require a craniotomy.
· DBS: Parkinson’s disease, tremors, and other neurological diseases can be treated by deep brain stimulation (DBS). Your brain is implanted with electrodes by a surgeon. Your brain is not responsible for controlling when the electrodes send electrical impulses. DBS controls unnatural brain activity.
· Endovascular surgery entails a minor incision in the groin where a catheter, or thin, flexible tube, is inserted into a blood vessel. Without removing your skull, they route the catheter up to your brain. There, they can do thrombectomy procedures or aneurysm repairs.
· Neuroendoscopy: In some cases, a surgeon can operate on the brain through the mouth or nose. They begin by inserting an endoscope (a thin, lighted tube with a video camera on one end). The surgeon then inserts surgical instruments into the tube. By doing this, they may remove malignancies without having to make a skull cut.
· Laser ablation: A craniotomy may not be safe for some disorders because they are too deep in the brain. In such situations, a laser probe inserted through a minute hole in the skull may be used to burn away the tumor, radiation-damaged, or epileptic tissue.
Does stereotactic radiosurgery operate on the brain?
One form of radiation treatment for brain cancer is stereotactic radiosurgery. Gamma Knife® radiosurgery is one of the technologies that are most frequently employed. Despite its name, there are no incisions, so it is not a sort of surgery. Radiation beams are directed towards your head by a medical professional to remove or reduce malignancies.
How do I get ready for a brain operation?
Planning is key while performing brain surgery. Your healthcare professional first performs a physical exam and blood testing. They want to make sure you are fit enough to undergo surgery and anaesthesia.
A variety of imaging tests, including MRIs, CT scans, PET scans, and angiographies, may also be performed on you. These scans produce incredibly fine-grained images of the brain’s structures, neurons, and blood arteries. Your surgeon can find the precise regions that require treatment with the aid of the images.
Also, your surgeon and other medical professionals will notify you of:
· Changing your health habits before surgery: If you smoke, cease a few weeks before surgery. Smoking makes it more likely that you will experience surgical complications and can slow your recovery.
· Preoperative medication changes: Some patients take steroids before brain surgery to lower the risk of swelling. Anti-epileptic medications lower the chance of seizures. You might need to stop taking any blood-thinning medications a few days or a week before surgery.
· What to anticipate following surgery: There may or may not be a protracted healing period, depending on the procedure you have. You can also require neurological rehabilitation.
What transpires during a brain operation?
Each person’s experience with brain surgery varies. Sometimes the surgical team must remove a portion of your head to perform the procedure, or they may only remove a small portion to make an incision (cut). For the majority of minimally invasive procedures, shaving your head is not necessary.
General anaesthesia, which renders you fully unconscious, is required for some surgeries. Some treatments, however, just require sedation, which means you’re awake but only partially so. In some procedures, you might even be awake during the procedure. This is true for several neurological, epileptic, or neoplastic diseases.
You receive anaesthesia on your head during an awake craniotomy so that the incision won’t hurt. Furthermore, medication is administered to put you into light sleep. But, throughout the procedure, your surgeon and anesthesiologist will wake you up and give you instructions. It can be necessary for you to speak, move a bodily part, look at things, or recall knowledge. They might use a functional MRI to check your brain function before surgery. Interoperative brain mapping is the term used by suppliers. This procedure aids your surgeon in avoiding critical brain tissue when performing surgery.
Depending on how extensive your procedure is, brain surgery may take two to nine hours or longer.
What occurs following brain surgery?
You’ll remain in the hospital for observation following your procedure. You might just need to stay for one to two days if you have a less intrusive technique like endovascular surgery. Nonetheless, you might need to stay in the hospital for up to 10 days following an open craniotomy.
To stop seizures and brain swelling, you can keep taking steroids or anti-seizure drugs. To recover some functions, you could also require neurorehabilitation. This might entail receiving treatment from occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, and physical therapists. If necessary, they can assist you with regaining your strength, mobility, speaking abilities, and capacity to carry out daily chores.
What dangers come with brain surgery?
Like with any surgery, there is a chance of bleeding, infection, or anaesthesia-related side effects with brain surgery. Following-surgery side effects can also include the following:
· Aphasia (difficulty speaking) (difficulty speaking).
· a brain swell.
· delirium or confusion.
· Dizziness.
· Headaches.
· issues with movement or balance.
The following are the main long-term dangers following brain surgery:
· A behaviour change.
· brain injury.
· walking challenge.
· loss of memory.
· Speech difficulties.
· your arms or legs are weak.
What advantages do brain operations have?
Surgery on the brain may save a patient’s life. It can cure cancers, strokes, brain bleeding, and other severe medical conditions. Additionally, brain surgery is now safer than ever because of developments in medical technology. There are newer, less intrusive techniques available that significantly lower the chance of problems.
What is the prognosis following brain surgery?
Each person’s recovery from brain surgery is unique. Recovery from less invasive brain procedures can take weeks. Or your recovery from a significant treatment like a craniotomy might take months.
Find out from your healthcare professional when it is safe to resume work and daily activities. They can provide you with particular advice based on the procedure you had. In the days, weeks, and months following surgery, it’s critical to keep your follow-up appointments. To make sure the issue hasn’t come back, you could require imaging scans.
Read our recent article: How To Prepare For Brain Surgery?
