One afternoon in late June, I was called to the emergency room to look over a CT scan of the brain of a young boy. The 5-year-old’s troubles had begun a while back with headaches and vision problems. After visits to his pediatrician and an ophthalmologist, he got a prescription for new glasses. The family thought the matter was solved.
Several months later, though, the child’s mother noticed that he had difficulty with balance. Then he developed early-morning headaches with nausea and vomiting. The boy’s pediatrician told his parents that he must be evaluated immediately, so they brought him to the emergency room of the Children’s Hospital in San Diego, where I am a resident in neurosurgery.
The CT scan showed dilation of the ventricles, the fluid-filled cavities in the brain. This expansion is almost always caused by a blockage, and a detailed MRI soon found the source: a tumor ...
