Antonio Venus-Reeve, 14, had his first shunt surgery for hydrocephalus when he was 2½ months old. Born at 25 weeks’ gestation, weighing less than two pounds, he had a serious brain bleed seven days later.
As Antonio’s head began to swell with excess fluid, neurologists at Boston Children’s Hospital told his mother, Joanne Venus-Williams, that Antonio probably would not be able to walk, talk or develop major motor skills. “Neurosurgery got involved and the team did daily spinal taps to draw out the fluid in his brain,” says Venus-Williams. “They were hoping he wouldn’t need a shunt, but we got to the point where we knew it was the way to go.”
The shunt — a tube placed in the brain — would drain the excess fluid into Antonio’s abdomen. Before it was placed, neurosurgeon Joseph Madsen, MD, came to see Antonio. Joanne recognized him: years earlier, Madsen had been the chief neurosurgical resident at Massachusetts General Hospital where Joanne had coordinated the neurosurgery clinic. “I felt confident that my son was in good hands,” Joanne says. “Even at a young age, Dr. Madsen had his head on.”
But the shunt was only the beginning of Antonio’s fight. Shunts have a tendency to plug up and malfunction, requiring surgery to correct or replace them.
Antonio’s first shunt failure occurred before he was 1½. It was always hard to tell when his shunt stopped working: He’d become lethargic, tired, not eating, crying — symptoms that could be caused by anything. “Do we take him to the hospital or not take him to the hospital?” says Joanne. “That was always an issue.”
Read the full post on Vector: Detecting shunt failure in hydrocephalus without imaging or surgery: ShuntCheck
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