54-yr-old recovers after surgery to fix slipping brain

A CT scan and a brain MRI later, the doctors found out that a small part of Loganathan’s the temporal lobe in his brain was slipping out through a 10 mm x 6 mm hole in the upper wall of his inner ear. The temporal lobe is responsible for storing memory and emotions.

Having suffered from severe periodical headaches and right ear pain for a year, the resident of Erode had visited several hospitals across the state but was unable to get a proper diagnosis of his condition.

He even went on to get an ear surgery but a couple of months later, Loganathan’s condition worsened. He began to ooze a clear watery discharge from his right ear and persistent headache. Finally, it was on November 23 that he approached Apollo Hospital in OMR for help.

Dr Krishnakumar, the head of the ENT department at the hospital said that their investigations revealed a huge defect in the upper wall of Loganathan’s inner ear. “We performed a procedure to close the hole in the ear’s acoustic canal thus containing the brain,” said the doctor.

Speaking about the surgery, Dr Joy Varghese, a senior consultant and neuro surgeon at the hospital, said, “A small piece of Loganathan’s skull was removed, and the inner softer portion of the skull was peeled off and used to seal the hole in the ear after removing the exposed part of the brain in an eight-hour long procedure.”

The doctor added that removing a part of the temporal lobe would not affect him as the exposed part was small and had scarred.

While such occurrences are incredibly rare in adults, doctors said that the hole might have been caused by an accident that Loganathan met with 10 years ago or by a prolonged ear infection. “If left untreated the patient might have had sequence of seizures and eventually collapsed,” said Dr Varghese.

There is, however, no cause for worry now as the doctors claimed that Loganathan had recovered well and was discharged a week after the surgery.