We describe the case of a young woman who was 29 weeks pregnant and presented with preterm labour along with hydrocephalus and brain stem symptoms from a large cytic lesion associated with a precariously sited haemangioblastoma. Cyst drainage was initially employed, with an Ommaya reservoir and periodic percutaneous drainage until the patient could undergo a full-term delivery. Following delivery, the tumour was embolised and resected surgically in the following week. The patient had no new deficits following surgery. We believe this temporising approach for symptomatic haemangioblastomas discovered in high risk pregnancies can lead to a better outcome for the mother and child.
We report a case of mild to moderate traumatic brain injury in which ICP monitoring or quantitative cerebral perfusion data may have allowed earlier recognition of impending herniation, avoidance of a secondary insult, and ultimately resulted in a better outcome, even though the patient did not meet the standard guidelines of the Brain Trauma Foundation. A thirty-five year old male who presented with traumatic bifrontal contusions and GCS of fourteen and twelve hours later progressed rapidly to having dilated pupils and transtentorial/central herniation over the course of fifteen minutes. The patient was taken emergently for a bifrontal craniectomy. Post operatively he had an acute infarct in the posterolateral left temporal lobe with expected evolution of parenchymal contusions as well as infarcts in the splenium of the corpus callosum, left thalamus and medial right occipital lobe. This case signifies an exception from the guidelines submitted by the Brain Trauma Foundation for intracranial pressure monitoring in patients with severe brain injury.We also point out previous reports which state that in such a patient a more sensitive test for detection would perhaps be quantitative blood flow monitoring, and may have led to a better outcome. We recommend using intracranial pressure monitoring or blood flow measurements to trend patients with bifrontal intraparenchymal contusions and GCS greater than eight to prevent clinically undetected deterioration from transtentorial/central herniation.
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