No abstract

Stress is under-recognised as a potential causative factor for reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS). Here we present a case of RCVS occurring during a time of extreme emotional duress. A 46-year-old female patient with medical history of bipolar disorder developed a severe headache during her father’s funeral. The following day she was discovered to have bilateral hemiparesis, aphasia, encephalopathy and was brought emergently to the hospital. Neuroimaging revealed a 33 mL left fronto-parietal haematoma with subarachnoid blood near the vertex bilaterally. She underwent craniotomy, haematoma evacuation and external ventricular drain placement. The patient received two cerebral angiograms, the first showing multifocal cerebral vasoconstriction and the second showing resolution of these changes. She improved significantly over the course of her 3-week hospitalisation and eventually made a full recovery, including the ability to speak fluently in six languages with no significant deficits other than hypersomnia; she now requires 10 hours of sleep each night as compared with 7 hours prior to her brain injury.

One-Lung Ventilation (OLV) is achieved in thoracic surgeries to facilitate collapse of one lung for better surgical visualisation. Double-lumen tubes and bronchial blockers are two commonly used devices for OLV. Patients with ‘difficult airway’ pose significant challenges for insertion of Double Lumen Endotracheal Tube (DLT). Dual malignancy such as carcinoma of lung and head and neck is extremely rare to present with. Patients presenting with restricted mouth opening due to previous surgeries and requiring lung isolation techniques may pose significant challenges to anaesthesiologist. The difficult airway scenario may arise in such patients owing to their previous surgery to the tongue, larynx, neck, mandible or previous radiation. The present case was of 47-year-old of lung isolation achieved in a patient with restricted mouth opening with an orotracheal tube, bougie, endobronchial blocker and a flexible Fibre Optic Bronchoscope (FOB). Left upper lobectomy was successfully performed after passing endobronchial blocker through a conventional orotracheal tube under the guidance of FOB.