Hemispherectomy is the disconnecting or removing one side
of the brains hemisphere from the other. It is only considered for patients which
are usually children who have severe epilepsy with seizures on one side of the
brain. Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain’s electrical system and abnormal electrical
impulses causes brief change in movement, behavior, sensation, or awareness. The
seizures may last from a couple of seconds to a few minutes depending on the
condition of the person. The seizures may occurs many times during a day
depending on the severity of the condition. The person will lose control of
what they were doing and could be very dangerous because could fall and make
things much worse.
Many
people try and control this situation with medication which at times it does
work but with other more severe cases the doctors could only recommend a hemispherectomy
and hope that it all goes well so that the person could have a chance to live a
normal life. The remaining functioning portion of the brain will take over the
tasks that were previously controlled by the part of the brain that has been
removed. This is describe as brain plasticity were the brain has the ability to
change and adapt to the new changes that have occurred. Plasticity is defined
as the brain’s capacity to shape by experience, its capacity to learn and
remember and ability to reorganize and recover after injury. So once the
hemispherectomy has been preform the brain will realize that there has been a
change done and will do all that is need to organize it’s self so that it could
function like it is supposed to.
You have
to take into consideration that by doing this procedure the body will lose some
functions and body movement that may never come back on the side opposite of
the operation even after therapy. The results of hemispherectomy are actually
quite good and patients will experience complete or nearly complete seizure
control which is always a good thing to look forward for. Some people will
still need to take anti-seizure medication but eventually be able to stop or
reduce the dosage to a low minimum.
The brain is very remarkable and it really surprised me to discover how that even when a hemispherectomy is performed, the part of the brain that is fully functioning is capable of controlling the other part that has been removed. I would imagine this taking quit some time, but it just goes to show how remarkable the brain truly is. I was never in favor of this extreme procedure, but after watching the video it made me understand how certain techniques like this can help people, like the little boy in the video, live a less difficult life. I don't think everyone who suffers from a mild form of epilepsy should consider this as their first option, however.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the video I realized that there are still so many unknown factors about our brains. There's much to learn about it but I believe we have come a long way and have been advancing in the right direction. This type of procedures show that we're heading the right way and gives hope to people who suffer from epilepsy. I'm glad the little boy will have a life with less or no epilepsy, and recover from the surgery.
ReplyDelete