Teen trick stops blood to brain of 11-yr-old , lands him in hospital
An 11-year-old boy fell unconscious and had to receive expert medical attention for a week after a teenager pressed his carotid artery during play, recently, in Kamalapur Deviganj village of Kunda tehsil in Pratapgarh.
After the child failed to recover, the panicked parents took the child to a neurosurgeon in Prayagraj, who had to treat the child for nearly a week to make him gain normalcy.
According to city-based neurosurgeon Dr Prakash Khaitan, who treated the child, dangerous online games on social networking sites, are accessible to children. They practise the tricks shown in the video on friends, sometimes injuring them.
'Ahmaan, 11, arrived in hospital last week. He was exhibiting symptoms of epilepsy. On enquiring about the case history, his family members revealed the truth. As usual, children were playing in the house where a wedding was scheduled. One of the boys, Farhan, a teenager, tried to show off some tricks to other children, which he had picked up from YouTube. He pressed the two carotid nerves leading to the brain, present below the ear lobes, thereby blocking blood supply to the brain, leaving the boy unconscious,' he added.
'Although this is a unique case in my career, it certainly exposes the threat that unchecked exposure to the internet can spell for children,' he said.
Ahman's family members said that when he did not regain consciousness, his friends called them to see what had happened. 'When we went inside the room, Ahmaan was not fully in his senses and foam was coming out of his mouth. He had also wet his pants and was not able to drink water or stand on his legs. His face had also turned red,' said his father Mohd Yunus.
Dr Kehtan said that an MRI showed that the brain was not getting oxygen due to the compression of the carotid artery supplying blood to his brain. 'Due to this, the child started having epileptic attacks and his hands and legs became weak. After five days of treatment, the child has now started walking on his feet.The trick could be dangerous as cutting of blood supply to the brain could prove fatal leading to epilepsy, paralysis, etc,' he added.
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