The college basketball community (not to mention UC fans and players) were shocked last weekend to learn that a medical scare would keep head coach Mick Cronin off the sidelines for the foreseeable future.
After weeks of painful headaches, Cronin, 43, was diagnosed with an unruptured brain aneurysm. As the nine-year coach of the Bearcats undergoes treatment, doctors have advised him to refrain from his coaching duties.
Cronin reportedly told his players of his problem shortly before UC’s Dec. 20 home game with Virginia Commonwealth.
“I’m not dying. I’ve got a medical condition right now that the doctors are going to keep me out of the game until they know exactly how to treat it,” Cronin told his players.
That doctors caught Cronin’s before a burst is nothing short of a lucky break for the hometown hero.
An aneurysm is an abnormal, weak spot on a blood vessel that causes an outward bulging or ballooning of the arterial wall. An aneurysm can affect any vessel in the body, but those in the head can cause a serious medical conditions “” mainly, strokes and brain damage “” when they rupture.
Burst cranial aneurysms affect up to 30,000 patients in the U.S. annually, according to health industry stats. Ten to 15 percent of those patients die before reaching a hospital and medical care, while up to half will die within 30 days. Of patients who survive a burst cranial aneurysm, about half are left with some permanent neurological deficit because of it.
It’s estimated that one in 15 Americans will develop a brain aneurysm during their lifetime. While genetics is a major risk factor for developing one, other factors like high blood pressure, obesity and, of course, smoking are players in their development, too.
Detection
Most aneurysms are finally found because they’ve burst, which can manifest in severe headaches, nausea, blurred vision or other eye problems, like a sensitivity to light or double vision. Unfortunately, once it’s developed to that stage, time is already short.
In the lucky cases, like Cronin, with enraptured aneurysms, many of the same symptoms are present along with others like cognitive and memory problems, slurred or halting speech or balance problems.
Seek medical care at the earliest warning signs. Your doctor will likely order scans (either CT or MRI) or jump right to a cerebral angiogram (guiding a wire through your arteries) to determine the exact location of the aneurysm and the safest way forward.
Treatment options
Once the aneurysm is found and has been assessed, there are two likely treatment options “” a surgical clip or a newer process called endovascular coiling.
Clipping involves open surgery to place a clip across the aneurysm to prevent blood flow from filling the stretched area, shoring up the weakened area. The surgery itself can be minor, with patients back home within two to three days and on restricted activity orders for one to two months.
Coiling, a logical extension of angiogram, involves small threading platinum wires through the catheter tube to fill the inside of tar stretched area, preventing blood flow from advancing there are creating pressure that leads to a burst. Less invasive than open surgery, coiling patients can resume normal activity as little as a day after the procedure.
Another option is, surprisingly, to do nothing. Your doctor may decide you’re not in immediate danger of a burst and elect to monitor the aneurysm’s progress while limiting your risk factors.
