Your Health: Brain aneurysms - the family connection

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - *A warning: the included video segment does show surgery.*

A doctor on a mission to add two words to that questionnaire that could impact your health. *A warning: the included video segment does show surgery.*

If you’ve been to the doctor’s office, you know about the paperwork you must fill out before you get to see the physician. There is one condition that doctors don’t ask about - and it’s the one question that could save your life, and the lives of your family members.

Faith plays a major role in Ezra Sneed’s and Rhonda Baker’s lives. “When you’re trusting the Lord, you just feel good,” Sneed says.

The two sisters have a lot to be thankful for.

“One morning I woke up and my vision was kind of blurry,” said Baker. An MRA scan showed Rhonda had not one, but two giant brain aneurysms.

“A brain aneurysm is like a bulge,” said Dr. Ricardo Hanel, a neurosurgeon at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida. “Like a stretch on a blood vessel.” Dr. Hanel was able to snake a catheter from Rhonda’s groin to her brain, diverting blood from the aneurysm and stopping it from growing. He was also able to save Rhonda’s older sister from the same fate, or even worse.

“It was a surprise,” Ezra said. “I didn’t know what an aneurysm was.”

Dr. Hanel wants to change that. He is on a mission to spread the word about brain aneurysms and the family connection.

“It’s very important to educate all the way from primary care physicians to the whole population,” Dr. Hanel said.

If you have first-degree relatives with a brain aneurysm, your risk of having one goes up from 4% to 6%. Ezra had the same minimally invasive procedure as her sister, and they are both living proof that it’s important to talk about brain aneurysms with your doctor and your family.

The MRA scan used to detect brain aneurysms is done on the same machine that’s used for an MRI, but it just looks at brain vessels and allows doctors to determine whether to do a procedure or monitor it.

It’s vital that you find the aneurysm before it’s too late. If it ruptures, you have a 40% chance of dying from it.

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