BrainWave

Hurray, Today is World Stroke Day! Stroke is not a joke and you know what?  It is preventable. Stroke was first recognized by Hippocrates, father of modern medicine, over 2400 years ago. It was then called apoplexy, which means ‘’struck down by violence’’ in Greek. It was not until the mid-1600s that Jacob Wepfer found that patients who died with apoplexy had bleeding in the brain. He also discovered that a blockage in one of the brain's blood vessels could cause apoplexy. Medical science continued to study the cause, symptoms and treatment of apoplexy and, finally, in 1928, apoplexy was divided into categories based on the cause of the blood vessel problem. This led to the terms stroke or "cerebrovascular accident (CVA)." Stroke is now often referred to as a "brain attack" to denote the fact that it is caused by a lack of blood supply to the brain, very much like a heart attack is caused by a lack of blood supply to the heart. T

Do you know that technically a stroke is called a cerebrovascular accident (CVA)? Do you also know that in several parts of the world, it is also called a ‘brain attack ’ in order to draw attention to the medical and neurological emergency that it is?     Some epidemiology of stroke It is the 2 nd commonest cause of death worldwide and the leading cause of disability worldwide. Low and middle income countries (Nigeria is one of the former) account for the largest burden of stroke mortality (> 85%). There are some regional variations in the pattern of stroke presentation. Ischaemic stroke (due to obstruction of blood supply to the brain) is much commoner than the haemorrhagic type (due to bleeding into the brain). However intracerebral haemorrhage (a subtype of haemorrhagic stroke) is most commonly seen in Africa than in other regions. In Africa, some data show that southern African countries tend to have these bleeds more than other parts of the continent. St

Hydrocephalus is got from the combination of two words; ‘hydro’ which means water and ‘cephalus’ which means head. Hydrocephalus literally means water in the head. Then which part of the head? Hydrocephalus is the build-up of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in the subarachnoid space of the brain, due to impaired circulation or absorption of the fluid. It can either be of the communicating (non-obstructive) type, which means that the flow of CSF is obstructed after it exits the ventricles of the brain or it can be of the non-communicating (obstructive) type which means that the flow of CSF is obstructed within the ventricles.  The non-communicating type majorly occurs in children with conditions like aqueductal stenosis, Arnold Chiari malformation, Dandy- Walker syndrome etc. The communicating type occurs in both adults and children with conditions like subarachnoid haemorrhage; mass lesions like haematomas and brain abscess as well as in pneumococcal and tuberculous meningitis.

On this day we remember those who stutter. Another word for stutter is stammer. We all know one or two persons who stammer or had stammered. I was one too as a youngster, especially when angry or excited.   Stammering/ stuttering is a very common condition and is often depicted comically in drama sketches. More than 70 million people are affected worldwide. Stuttering is a speech disorder in which sounds, syllables or words are repeated or elongated leading to a disruption in the normal flow of speech.   Often this disruption is accompanied by secondary struggling behaviours such as rapid eye blinking or extremity tremors. What leads to stuttering? It is postulated that stuttering may result from any of the following:- (i) genetic factors – usually an autosomal dominant pattern of inheritance and seen in 60% of cases, with one or more family members affected. (ii) Impaired speech and language development in early childhood especially in the setting of developmental delay

World Blind Day was marked on the 15 th of October 2017. To commemorate the day, I would like to focus on a variant of blindness called cortical blindness which is of much interest to Neurologists and afflicts many people worldwide. These are people ‘’who look but do not see’’. In Nigeria, we may come across such individuals in our daily lives. Cortical blindness is complete or partial visual loss usually caused by a lesion in the occipital cortex affecting geniculo-calcarine fibres of the visual pathway. It commonly results from vascular events (stroke affecting the posterior cerebral artery territory) but may also be due to cardiac surgery, brain surgery, post- cerebral angiography, traumatic brain injury and seizures. Usually the structures of the eye are normal on examination in cortical blindness. Patients with cortical blindness may surprisingly be unaware of this visual loss and deny such (Anton’s syndrome). Some present with hallucinations and will also have

World Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day Cerebral palsy is a group of permanent disorders of movement and posture causing activity limitation that are attributed to non-progressive disturbances in the developing foetal or infant brain. The motor disorders are often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, perception, cognition, communication and behavior as well as by epilepsy and secondary musculoskeletal problems. Cerebral palsy is caused by a broad group of developmental, genetic, metabolic, ischaemic (majorly from obstetric complications, so can be prevented) and   infectious diseases. Celebrate world cerebral palsy Awareness day by finding satisfaction in everyone not based on what you pictured they should be but by who they are. They may have some disabilities but they are able to do something. Don’t capitalize on the disabilities and overlook their abilities. Would you let someone with cerebral palsy make a mark in the tides of time? Or would you continue to lock them in