Hydrocephalus - Exceptional Case

Exceptional Case

One interesting case involving a person with past hydrocephalus was a 44-year-old French man, whose brain had been reduced to little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, due to the buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in his head. The man, who had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away fluid (which was removed when he was 14), went to a hospital after he had been experiencing mild weakness in his left leg.

In July 2007, Fox News quoted Dr. Lionel Feuillet of Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille as saying: "The images were most unusual... the brain was virtually absent." When doctors learned of the man's medical history, they performed a computed tomography (CT) scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles in the skull. Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100. This would be considered "borderline intellectual functioning"- which is just next to the level of being officially considered mentally challenged.

Remarkably, the man was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant, leading an at least superficially normal life, despite having enlarged ventricles with a decreased volume of brain tissue. "What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," commented Dr. Max Muenke, a pediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side."