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Written By: Admin | Updated : April 20, 2013 8:58 AM IST
Doctors treating baby Roona Begum, the 18-month-old girl from Tripura, say that she is stable, but requires a lot more medical help. Roona Begum was suffering from a rare illness called hydrocephalus, that had caused her head to swell to almost three times its original size.
After an initial examination doctors say that they need to wait a few more weeks before they start any kind of intervention. Doctors have started draining fluid from the girl's head, gradually and say that they will have to wait. The girl was moved from Tripura to Fortis at Gurgaon, Delhi. A spokesperson from the hospital said that the girl was stable but her clinical parameters were yet compromised to start any major intervention. He also said that till the other parameters improve, doctors would keep draining fluid from her head in small quantities.
Draining the fluid gradually is important to the survival of Roona, this is because the fluid in her head has maintained a particular amount of pressure on her brain. If this pressure were to suddenly be released, it could cause a stroke or worse cause bleeding withing her brain. A gradual release of the fluid from her head, will allow her brain to acclimatise to the change in the internal pressure, thereby allowing it to come back to normal over a period of time.
The doctors also said that since she had sores and lesions at the base of her head and deep chest infections accompanied with a greatly diminished immune system, has forced their hand to wait till she becomes stronger. The doctors treating her had said that her head circumference had been progressively growing since birth and was an unprecedented 94-centimeters, making it one of the most complex of cases.
Hydrocephalus is an extremely rare condition that affects only about one in 500 children the world over. The word hydrocephalus is derived from the Greek words; hydro meaning water and cephalus meaning head , literally meaning water on the brain . This condition is characterized by excessive fluid build up in the head of a baby. Although the word refers to water , it is not water that accumulates in the brain, but CSF or cerebro-spinal fluid that accumulates within the ventricles (spaces in the brain) of the brain. This accumulation leads to widening of these spaces leading to unnatural pressure being exerted on the tissue of the brain.
