Yamini Karanam (Photo : YouTube)
A complete embryo was found inside the brain of a 26-year-old woman causing her to have difficulties conversing and reading and fortunately, Los Angeles doctors were able to remove it.
The case of the woman, identified as Yamini Karanam, is called teratoma and it is the discovery that an embryo complete with bone, hair, and teeth is inside the skull of the patient. She had to seek for medical help in September 2015 because she can no longer comprehend what she was reading or what she was listening to.
Karanam referred to her embryonic twin as her "evil twin sister," NBC Los Angeles reported. Doctors initially thought that the Indiana University PhD student had a brain tumor. However, a keyhole surgery was able to determine the real cause of her having health problems.
Skullbase Institute's Dr. Hrayr Shahinian shared with the publication that teratoma is a very rare case as this is only the second instance he has encountered such out of the 8,000 surgeries he handled. The embryo was feared to be cancerous if removed but according to the pathologists who worked on Karanam's case, it turned out to be successful and she is expected to fully recover from it, Sky News reported.
The method used by Shahinian was the use of fiber-optic technology where digital imagery guided the doctors to locate this kind of tumor. A half-inch incision was done to Karanam's brain in order to chisel away the embryo as it is a very delicate process.
Shainian was the one who invented the technique used in Karanam's case and he shared that before the fiber optic technology, the only way to remove such tumor from the brain was to remove half of the skull. This is because the brain is a very sensitive organ and the fewer disturbances it suffers from, the better the chances the person will live normally.
