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SearchSeptember is Brain Aneurysm Awareness Month. Meet a woman who was doubly surprised to learn she had an aneurysm – and that it could be treated through her eyelid!
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CLEVELAND - Barbara O’Hara, of Stuart, FL, enjoys being active but neck pain and migraine headaches stopped her in her tracks.
“Oh, that pain was just awful, just excruciating,” she said.
Unable to find relief, she was referred to Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon, Mauricio Mandel, MD.
“He sent me to have many tests where he found an aneurysm,” O’Hara recalled.
Barbara needed brain surgery to treat the aneurysm.
“We can think about brain aneurysm as a bubble in the artery of our brain,” Dr. Mandel said. “The problem with aneurysm is that that bubble can eventually rupture and if it ruptures, it can cause a stroke.”
Traditional surgery calls for a large incision along the hairline, but O’Hara qualified for a novel, minimally invasive approach called transorbital, or through the eyelid, surgery.
“With a tiny incision over the eye, we do the same clipping of the aneurysm that is done with the open surgery, but in a much less invasive way,” explained Dr. Mandel.
3D imaging is used to help plan the surgery to ensure safety, and most people go home the following day and recover quickly.
“You’d never know I had surgery. There's no scar,” O’Hara said. “To wake up and have no pain. I was amazed. I can get out in the sun and enjoy my life.”
In addition to brain aneurysms, epilepsy and some brain tumors can also be treated through the eyelid.
Only a few medical centers in the United States offer transorbital surgery.
