A 14-year-old boy from war-ravaged Iraq who suffered from a rare brain vessel anomaly was treated successfully in a two-phase surgery at a private hospital in Delhi. Ahmed was brought to the hospital with a large aneurysm — a balloon-like bulge in an artery caused by weakening of the artery wall — in one of the main arteries of the brain. A multi-disciplinary team of Dr Pranav Kumar, a consultant neurosurgery, Dr Shahin Nooreyezdan, consultant, plastic and reconstructive surgery and Dr Harsh Rastogi, consultant, neuro- intervention at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals carried out the brain vessel bypass surgery “

Another complexity in this case was that the entire length of the artery was abnormal,” said Dr Kumar. "The boy had already suffered a stroke resulting in slurred speech and weakness of right side of his body.”

According to the doctors, the aneurysm, or the abnormal swelling in the artery, was like “a ticking time bomb” that could have burst anytime and led to massive brain haemorrhage.

While Apollo claims to have achieved this feat for the first time, doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences claim to be performing the same surgery at less than half the cost for several years now. "In his (Ahmed’s) case, to stop any further risk, the diseased artery had to be blocked immediately,”

Dr. Kumar said. A week later, the neuro-interventionist successfully blocked the brain's abnormal, diseased artery. "The treatment defused the time bomb,” Dr Rastogi said.