House: Night of the Living Brain (Half) Dead

Remember that episode of Star Trek the hottie alien woman beamed onto the Enterprise and stole the Spock's brain to run her people's underground air conditioning system?

An autoimmune disease and House stole half a patient's brain this week. And the patient was singer Dave Matthews, by the way. Tell me, what you say!

Again with the autoimmune diseases. This time it's Takayasus Arteritis, which normally affects mostly women, but let's just let this one go.

The procedure is called a Functional Hemispherectomy , when surgeons remove a portion or half a hemisphere of the brain, and then disconnect the tissue that connects the two sides.

Taking out half a brain? Think it's just crazy medical fiction? Dr. Michael Smith WebMD's Chief Medical Editor, says think again.

"Well it's really not. Technically, a hemispherectomy means removing half of the brain as House did in this week's episode. Years ago this was done -- although rarely -- for people whose seizures could not be controlled with medication.

Today the surgery -- still only done in rare cases due to uncontrolled seizures -- usually involves cutting connections between the two haves of the brain instead of actually removing half the brain.

Half the brain isn't typically dead as in Patrick's case but it's often severely damaged due to injury or repeated seizures and that's why they don't lose much function when the connections are cut."

So, I guess House is saying sometimes you have to lose half your mind to gain a more whole life.



Related Topics:

• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
• Epilepsy Surgery

Technorati tags: HouseMD, House, TBI, seizures, brainremoval, brainsurgery, savant