- Doctors permanently disconnected half of a 6-year-old girl’s brain in a 10-hour surgery to stop her daily seizures Yahoo Life
- This 6-year-old had half of her brain ‘disconnected’ for surgery. Experts explain how it’s possible The Indian Express
- Surgeons disconnect half of six-year-old’s brain to stop seizures | You News24
- Doctors permanently disconnected half of a 6-year-old girl’s brain in a 10-hour surgery to stop her daily seiz Business Insider India
- Doctors ‘switch off’ half of 6-year-old’s brain to cure her of rare disease Moneycontrol
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Tag Archives: seizures
Sharon Stone requires 8 hours of ‘uninterrupted sleep’ to avoid ‘seizures’ after near-death health incident – Fox News
- Sharon Stone requires 8 hours of ‘uninterrupted sleep’ to avoid ‘seizures’ after near-death health incident Fox News
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- Actor Sharon Stone says she’s mostly out of work owing to her health issues | Entertainment News | Onmanorama Onmanorama
- Sharon Stone requires ‘eight hours of uninterrupted sleep’ after brain hemorrhage Times of India
- Sharon Stone Speaks Out About Near-Death Health Incident: ‘I Lost Everything’ Yahoo Life
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Bam Margera: I Was Pronounced Dead After Five Seizures, Pneumonia
Bam Margera reunited with his former “Jackass” collaborator Steve-O on the most recent episode of the latter’s “Wild Ride” podcast and opened up about his December 2022 hospitalization. News broke Dec. 9 that Margera had been put on a ventilator and was unable to breathe on his own after contracting pneumonia. Margera revealed to Steve-O that his pneumonia was only one factor behind his hospitalization, as he also suffered five different seizures.
“Basically, I was pronounced dead on Dec. 8,” Margera said. “I did not know that I had gnarly COVID and my body was shutting down. I went into four seizures, each one lasting 10 to 20 minutes. On the fourth one I bit my tongue so hard it was nearly fallen off. It got so swollen and puffy it wouldn’t fit in my mouth. I was drinking the infected blood which gave me pneumonia as well.”
Margera continued, “I went to the hospital and had my fifth seizure and then couldn’t breathe without a tube down my throat. I woke up five days later thinking I was there for just a couple hours. I spent eight days in there. When they took that tube out I felt like I sucked on Darth Vader’s dick.”
Steve-O recalled reading the news about Margera being put on a ventilator and thinking the “Jackass” star would lose his life. Margera and Steve-O both got their start in Hollywood on the MTV prank-stunt series, but Margera was not involved in last year’s feature film “Jackass Forever” because he broke a clause in his contract that required him to stay sober during production.
Margera filed a lawsuit last August against Paramount and “Jackass” ringleader Johnny Knoxville over the firing, claiming the creators coerced him into signing the “wellness agreement” for the movie while he was still in rehab. The suit alleged that Margera was fired after testing positive for Adderall, even though he had an Adderall prescription for 10 years. The lawsuit was eventually settled.
Watch Margera’s full interview on Steve-O’s “Wild Ride” podcast below.
A Man’s Seizures Turned Out to Be Caused by Dead Tapeworms in His Brain
Coming down with seizures would be a scary experience no matter what, but for one unfortunate man, that experience was compounded by the discovery that dead tapeworm cysts lodged in his brain for decades were the root cause. Thankfully, his seizures were treated successfully, and the man seems to have made a recovery in the years since.
Doctors in Massachusetts described the patient’s case in a paper out last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. According to the report, which included his wife’s testimony, the 38-year-old man had fallen out of his bed at 4 a.m. He then began shaking and speaking gibberish. When police and emergency medical services arrived, he was “combative and disoriented” and initially refused to go to the hospital in an ambulance. On his way to the emergency room, he experienced a two-minute-long seizure and was given a sedative commonly used for seizures.
The man had no history of underlying health problems, and, according to his family, he had been completely fine the day before. Once doctors were able to run CT and MRI scans of his brain, though, the likely culprit of his illness was found: calcified and long-since-dead larval tapeworm cysts. Doctors then concluded that he had a relatively rare form of infestation from the pork tapeworm (Taenia solium), known as neurocysticercosis.
A pork tapeworm infestation can broadly manifest in two ways. If we ingest tapeworms found in pork or other undercooked meat that have matured a bit into cysts, these cysts will migrate to our intestines and bloom into full-blown adult tapeworms—uncomfortably long, weight-loss-inducing parasites. These worms will produce eggs that get pooped out and potentially find their way back to other animals like pigs, so that the cycle can start all over again.
But if another human or even the same infected human then ingests these eggs, the new generation of worms reaches a dead end and can only mature into their cyst form of life. Unfortunately, the nightmare doesn’t end there, because these cysts can still wreck havoc wherever they end up. When they get stuck in the brain, they can cause pressure and trigger inflammation that leads to all sorts of neurological symptoms, including seizures and even death. But it can take years or decades following infestation for symptoms to show up, often only after the worm cysts die (adult tapeworms can live up to 30 years in a host; cysts have a shorter lifespan of around five years). Sometimes, the cysts and the trouble they cause can be confused for a brain tumor.
Locally acquired tapeworm infestations are rare in the U.S. but remain very common in developing countries. And the doctors’ best guess is that their patient first played host to these worms at least 20 years ago in his native home of Guatemala, before he migrated to the U.S.
Following treatment with anti-seizure medication and steroids, the man’s condition (including the swelling around the lesions in his brain) improved enough that he was discharged from the hospital by day five. Though the cysts can sometimes be removed surgically or treated with antiparasitics if they’re still alive, that’s often not possible or needed, and patients who have had seizures will instead be given long-term medication to manage or prevent them in the future, as was the case here. Luckily, follow-up visits three years later have found that the man hasn’t had any episodes of seizure since and that he remains in good health.
While neurocysticercosis is relatively rare here, it’s one of the leading causes of seizures that show up in adulthood worldwide. Even in the U.S., about 1,000 people are hospitalized as a result every year. Cysticercosis in general is considered a neglected tropical disease, and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is currently “little being done to monitor, prevent, or identify and treat neurocysticercosis.”
Boston Man Suffers Seizures Caused By Tapeworms In His Brain
A Boston man thought he was in good health found out otherwise when he started engaging in strange behavior early one morning.
According to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the otherwise healthy man fell out of bed at approximately 4 a.m. and started shaking on the floor.
Even stranger: the man appeared confused and was “speaking gibberish.”
The man was taken to a hospital, but doctors were stumped: He hadn’t been ill recently and there was no history of seizures or cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, genitourinary or neurologic disorders.
In addition, the man “rarely” drank alcohol or used tobacco and other illicit drugs that might have explained the strange behavior.
Although the patient didn’t verbally respond to questions or follow commands, his gag and cough reflexes were normal.
It was only after doctors performed a neurologic exam, laboratory testing and looked at cerebral imaging that the man was finally diagnosed.
Turns out, he had cysticercosis, a tapeworm infection that affects the brain, muscle and other tissues.
Although it is unknown how long the man had the condition, doctors said he emigrated from a “rural area” of Guatemala. In addition, “the disease is “indolent,” and can avoid attracting the body’s immune response system for almost five years, the study said.
However, the disease can cause lumps under the skin and an infected person can suffer headaches and seizures.
Once diagnosed, the patient was admitted to a neurosciences intensive care unit so both his lactic acid level and white-cell count could be normalized.
The man also took medicine normally used to treat epilepsy to control the seizures before getting treated with tapeworm medicine for two weeks along with four weeks of another high-dose parasite solution.
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Man hospitalized with seizures discovers tapeworm was in brain for decades
A man hospitalized with mysterious seizures and an “altered mental status” had tapeworms living in his brain for decades, according to researchers.
In a case study published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, experts from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School said the 38-year-old man was initially evaluated following his first seizure and had been “speaking gibberish.”
The man, who had immigrated from rural Guatemala, was combative and disoriented until he arrived at the hospital, where he had a witnessed generalized tonic-clonic seizure.
Although the patient’s eyes were open – with an involuntary upward gaze – he did not verbally respond to questions or follow commands.
TAPEWORMS: HOW TO TELL IF YOU HAVE ONE
Gag and cough reflexes were normal and the man had no history of illness, medication or drug use and rarely drank alcohol.
The doctors gave him two doses of lorazepam administered intravenously seven minutes apart, and an endotracheal tube was placed for airway protection.
A chest radiograph taken was normal, and the team eventually diagnosed the patient, noting in the study that among patients presenting with an apparent first seizure, obtaining the clinical history is key.
Laboratory testing ruled out hyponatremia, renal dysfunction and liver dysfunction, and the man’s urine and serum toxicology panels were negative. However, further evaluation revealed leukocytosis and lactic acidosis.
An illustration of a tapeworm
(Credit: iStock)
Although an MRI has higher sensitivity and specificity than a CT scan of the head for the detection of brain parenchymal lesions, a CT is more commonly used in the emergency department
“It is likely that this patient underwent CT after arrival and stabilization in the emergency department, but if the CT study was negative, MRI would ultimately help us to carefully assess for a causative anatomical abnormality,” wrote Dr. Andrew Cole.
Cole also noted that electroencephalography (EEG), which is “extremely useful in classifying the seizure problem,” is also rarely performed rapidly in the emergency department.
Cole wrote that cysticercosis is the most common cause of acquired epilepsy worldwide, resulting from the ingesting of tapeworm eggs.
“On the basis of the features of the patient’s presentation, the fact that he had been healthy the day before the seizure, and his history of living in a rural area of Guatemala, neurocysticercosis is the most likely diagnosis in this case. To establish this diagnosis, CT was most likely performed, followed by MRI and EEG,” Cole said.
MAN HAD HUNDREDS OF TAPEWORMS IN BRAIN, CHEST AFTER EATING UNDERCOOKED PORK
During imaging, Dr. George Eng wrote that when findings are suggestive of cysticercosis, the diagnosis can be confirmed with serologic studies.
In testing for anti-cysticercal antibodies with the use of an enzyme-linked immunoelectrotransfer blot (EITB) assay, the presence of those antibodies was negative.
“The patient had evidence of three brain lesions, with one showing ring enhancement on MRI and all three showing partial calcification on CT. The calcifying progression of the lesions may account for the absence of antibody positivity in this patient. In addition, tests for antibodies against toxoplasma, strongyloides, and treponema were negative, as were an interferon-gamma release assay and a purified protein derivative tuberculin skin test for tuberculosis,” Eng said.
The 38-year-old had tested negative for latent tuberculosis – consensus guidelines recommend that patients who will receive prolonged glucocorticoid therapy first be evaluated for latent tuberculosis – and was empirically treated with ivermectin for possible concomitant strongyloidiasis.
The man was admitted to the neurosciences intensive care unit, and his lactic acid level and white-cell count both normalized within hours. Levetiracetam therapy was started to control seizures. An EEG was performed, and the patient was extubated 12 hours after presentation.
He was transferred to the neurology service the following morning and started treatment with two weeks of albendazole and praziquantel, four weeks of high-dose prednisone and a four-week tapering course. He was discharged on hospital day five with no further seizure activity and normal results on a neurologic examination.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that humans can become infected with tapeworms by eating raw or undercooked beef.
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Living in endemic areas can put people at greater risk, as well as exposure to livestock, poor hygiene and travel, the Mayo Clinic warns.