A Case Study of a Colloid Cyst :: Medical Tumors Cancer Essays

A Case Study of a Colloid Cyst Colloid cysts in the third ventricle of are very rare intracranial benign tumors. The cysts are located deep inside which makes treatment of the tumor very difficult. It takes a team of skilled professionals to treat patient with these kinds of cysts. The two people that I will be focusing on are the Neurologist and the Neurosurgeon even though there are whole teams of people that specialize in neurosurgery and that see to the patients care pre and post operation. The Role of the Neurologist: The role of the Neurologist is to diagnose and come up with a plan of action for the patient, depending on what is wrong with the patient. The Neurologist can order test for the patient to see what is wrong and what needs to be done. These tests can include but are not limited to blood test, CT scan, or MRI scan. The Neurologist works with the Neurosurgeon and instructs him or her on what to do during the surgery. Patient can get referred to Neurologist for many reasons but most often the patient symptoms are intracranial pressure (headaches) and/ or dizzy spells. Common signs of a colloid cyst are short-term memory interruptions and papilledema. Papilledema is swelling of the optic disk where the optic nerve enters the eyeball. The optic nerve is responsible for carrying virtual impulses to the brain. Based on the symptoms of the patient the neurologist will order test to find out what is going on. A Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is one way of diagnosing. Most of the brain and central nervous system problems are diagnosed through the use of a MRI. MRI creates an image using nuclear magnetic resonance and is possible because the human body is filled with small biological magnets. (See figure 1, normal brain during MRI) In the case of the patient he never saw a neurologist because his colloid cyst was found during a routine CAT scan following his accident. However the patient was suffering from dizzy spells prior to surgery. For patients with a colloid cyst the most common plan of action is surgery, which is preformed about 93% of the time. The two method used most often are Transcallosal and transcortialtransventricular. Out of the 105 patients in the