CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE

What is cerebral hemorrhage? What are its clinical treatments and home remedies?

What is cerebral hemorrhage? What are its clinical treatments and home remedies? A cerebral hemorrhage is actually blood extravasation into the brain tissue from a ruptured blood vessel. Whenever bleeding occurs, the affected area swells, and pressure inside the brain increases.

Blood spillage out of the blood vessels decreases the oxygen supply to the brain cells, causing brain death. Such a condition is then termed a hemorrhagic stroke.

In this article, you'll get to know more about cerebral hemorrhage, its clinical treatments, and home remedies?

More on Cerebral Hemorrhage

The cerebrum is a part of the brain, and hemorrhage means bleeding. Thus, cerebral hemorrhage is defined as bleeding within the brain tissue resulting in hematoma formation and the blood may or may not go int the ventricles of the brain. Medically, it is called Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ICH).1 It is also a subtype of stroke.

It is a life-threatening condition with the worst prognosis and requires immediate treatment.

What causes cerebral hemorrhage?

Several causes of cerebral hemorrhage are as follows:

• Chronic Hypertension: Long-term increased blood pressure levels weaken the arterial walls and thus can rupture blood vessels within the brain. It is the most common cause of this condition.
• Intracranial Aneurysms: Aneurysms are dilated portions of the blood vessels that have ballooned due to the weakening of those areas of the vessel wall. Aneurysms have a great tendency to rupture and cause an intracerebral hemorrhage.
• Arteriovenous Malformations: Abnormally produced blood vessels have weak anatomical support. Due to this, they can easily burst, and if ruptured within the brain, a hemorrhagic stroke occurs.
• Cerebral Venous Thrombosis: A thrombus is a pathologically formed blood clot within a blood vessel. If it forms within the cerebral vein, it is called a cerebral venous thrombus. A thrombus can locally increase the pressure of blood proximal to it and thus increasing the likelihood of vessel rupture.2

Symptoms of Cerebral Hemorrhage

Symptoms of intracerebral hemorrhage vary from person to person and also the severity. Most commonly occurring signs and symptoms of cerebral hemorrhage are as follows:

• Weakness, numbness, or paralysis in your face, arm, or leg, especially if it occurs on only one side of your body
• Having trouble in swallowing and eating
• Uncoordinated movements and loss of balance
• Headache with high severity and sudden in onset
•  Dizziness
• Blurry vision
• Problem with the language skills (reading, writing, speaking, understanding)
• nausea, vomiting
• apathy, sleepiness, lethargy, loss of consciousness
• Confusions3

Diagnosis of Cerebral Hemorrhage

Your doctor can only make a diagnosis of intracerebral hemorrhage. The doctor can use one of the following for making a diagnosis:

• CT scan: In this, the computer creates images of your brain, that can be used to confirm bleeding, and also assess for other evidence of blunt trauma to your brain.
•  MRI scan: This technique uses magnetic waves to see images of your brain. This is better than a CT scan as it creates more clear images to better identify the cause of the bleeding.
• Angiogram: It is a sort of X-ray technology which takes pictures of blood flowing within an artery, and can reveal any abnormalities with the blood vessels themselves.4

Clinical Treatments of Cerebral Hemorrhage

If intracerebral hemorrhage along with significant brain damage has happened, nothing could be done except prevention of further brain damage. Thus, all clinical treatments either reduce the risk of cerebral bleeding or prevent new damage to the brain. These clinical treatments include:

• Surgical Clipping of Ruptured Artery: Surgery is the only option left as no medicine can seal a ruptured artery. Thus, whenever an artery ruptures, it is essential to do surgery in order to clip the ruptured site.
• Medications to prevent future hemorrhages: Certain medications such as antihypertensives, anticoagulants, and thrombolytics, etc. reduce the risk of vessel rupture from hypertension, clots and, thrombi respectively.5

Home Remedies to Prevent Cerebral Hemorrhage

The below-stated home remedies and preventive measures can possibly save you from life-threatening intracerebral hemorrhages:

• Weight loss: Obese persons must try to do regular exercise and lose their weight so that their cholesterol levels could be maintained. Normal cholesterol levels are essential to prevent fat deposition within blood vessels

• Quit smoking: Cigarette smoking causes vascular problems and thus increase the risk of stroke. Cessation of smoking is the first thing you should do if you are a smoker.
• Healthy diet maintenance: A healthy diet of fruits and vegetables provide you the necessary nutrients essential for your body health and blood pressure maintenance.
• Regular Exercise: Having a good daily exercise maintains normal lipid levels in the blood, which can reduce the risks of cerebral accidents.

The Bottom Line

Recovery following Intracerebral Hemorrhage varies from person to person and will depend on the severity of the hemorrhagic attack. You should go for recovery therapies and also follow the guidelines given by your doctor to prevent further damage.

References

1.        Ziai, W. C. & Carhuapoma, J. R. Intracerebral Hemorrhage. Contin. Lifelong Learn. Neurol. 24, 1603–1622 (2018).

2.        de Oliveira Manoel, A. L. et al. The critical care management of spontaneous intracranial hemorrhage: a contemporary review. Crit. Care 20, 272 (2016).

3.        Rymer, M. M. Hemorrhagic stroke: intracerebral hemorrhage. Missouri medicine vol. 108 50–54 (2011).

4.        Morotti, A. & Goldstein, J. N. Diagnosis and Management of Acute Intracerebral Hemorrhage. Emerg. Med. Clin. North Am. 34, 883–899 (2016).

5.        Sahni, R. & Weinberger, J. Management of intracerebral hemorrhage. Vasc. Health Risk Manag. 3, 701–709 (2007).