Brain bleed

These were the CT brain images from the patient I was talking about yesterday.

View from the bottom (the blood is in the left side of the brain)

View from the front (as if you were looking in her face)

The white stuff is blood. She had a massive bleed in her brain. Poor prognosis. Even if she does recover, she'll never go back to normal.

This case was discussed at the audit meeting this morning. During this meeting we have to present cases like these with the consultants. It's like being in a hearing. The issue with this patient is that she was on medications to thin the blood to prevent another stroke. But she ended up bleeding (side effect) instead.

My friend was the on-call doctor who saw this patient the night before but didn't send her to ED that night. We were hoping she wouldn't get criticised too hard. Alhamdulillah no one was criticised. It's one of the cases where no one is to blame. Bad things happen even when we try our best. If we didn't thin the blood, she might get a second ischaemic stroke. But by thinning the blood, we set her up for a risk of bleeding. Which is what happened. Medicine is all about weighing the benefit versus harm in every case. Sometimes it doesn't work out.

Everyone has their time.