What is 'Beauty Parlour Stroke Syndrome'? All you need to know

CHENNAI: Getting your hair washed at a beauty parlour can be comfortable, but it could lead to complications in your nervous system at times. This rare condition is known as the beauty parlour stroke syndrome.

The term beauty parlour syndrome was coined by Dr. Michael Weintraub in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’ in 1993 after five women developed “serious neurological symptoms following shampoos at hair salons”, according to a report by ‘The Guardian’.

As per the report, the syndrome or vertebrobasilar insufficiency can occur in extremely rare cases when tilting the back of the neck over a basin can tear the artery, leading to blood clots and strokes.

Also known as a hairdresser-related ischemic cerebrovascular event (HICE) or vertebral-basilar ischemia (VBI), the rare phenomenon is caused by either cerebral artery dissection or vertebral artery compression due to neck positioning.

Recently reported in India:

Recently, a 50-year-old Hyderabad woman had visited a salon for relaxing treatment, which ended up being a nightmare. Before getting her hair trimmed, the woman had a stroke while having her hair washed. According to doctors, she was taken to a gastroenterologist, who treated her symptomatically.

The post was shared by Hyderabad Neurologist Dr. Sudhir Kumar on Twitter. The post captioned "The woman initially experienced dizziness, nausea, and vomiting while having her "hair washed with shampoo in a beauty parlour."

“Symptoms did not improve, the next day she developed a mild imbalance while walking. She was referred for my opinion. She had mild right cerebellar signs. MRI brain revealed infarct in the right posterior inferior cerebellar territory, MR angiogram showed left vertebral hypoplasia,” he tweeted.