As a television maker with a sense of drama, Kim Kardashian managed to make her diagnosis public in an appropriate manner: during a short teaser of the new season of her reality series The Kardashians she tells her family that doctors have discovered a brain aneurysm.
Kim Kardashian reveals brain aneurysm diagnosis
Aneurysm symptoms
An aneurysm is a local dilation or bulge of a blood vessel wall. In The New York Times Cleveland Clinic neurologist Shazam Hussain compares the condition to a weak spot in a bicycle tire.
The adhesions cause the vessel to become increasingly thinner until cracks occur, causing internal bleeding that, in the worst case, can lead to a fatal stroke.
Aneurysms in the brain are relatively common: about one in fifty people has an intact aneurysm. As a rule, they do not cause any complaints until they rupture, so people are often unaware that they are at risk.
Kim Kardashian hid her head on the red carpet of the Oscar Museum just days before the diagnosis. © Getty Images
Rarely, if the aneurysm becomes large, unruptured aneurysms can cause severe headaches, weakness, speech problems, or balance disorders, among other symptoms.
Sudden, severe headache is also one of the first signs that an aneurysm is rupturing. Patients often describe the headache that follows as ‘the worst of their lives’. Nausea, double vision, confusion, unconsciousness or epileptic seizures may also occur.
Brain scan Kim Kardashian
It is not clear whether Kim Kardashian is experiencing symptoms. Her spokesperson declined to respond to questions after the featurette The Kardashians was shared with the world.
The video shows how 45-year-old Kim undergoes a brain scan which shows that she has a ‘relatively small’ brain aneurysm.
It is also not certain whether she needs treatment. According to Dr Hussain, many small, intact aneurysms are monitored until doctors conclude that they need to act preventively.
‘Stress not a factor’
Kim Kardashian claims her condition was caused by stress. Flemish neurosurgeon Tony Van Haverbergh has a hard time about this, he says VRT NWS.
“I think it is too simplistic to say that stress is the main culprit. It may have a minimal impact, but the main causes are high blood pressure, smoking or high cholesterol… And very often a combination of all those factors.”