US Doctors Disconnect Half-Brain Of 6-Year-Old Girl To Cure Rare Disease

ITDC INIDA EPRESS/ ITDC NEWS: The surgery took 10 hours and the medical professionals anticipate that she will return to her pre-seizure self after undergoing various forms of physical therapy.

In a never-heard-before medical procedure, a team of doctors in the United States switched off a side of a six-year-old girl's brain to cure a rare disease. Brianna Bodley was suffering from Rasmussen's Encephalitis, a disease which leads to inflammation of the brain. The doctors from California's Loma Linda University Health carried out the specialised procedure and stated that she would be the "same person, even after disconnecting half her brain", as per a report in ABC News.

In the United States, about 500 kids are affected by this rare, chronic inflammatory condition. Brianna was a lively child who enjoyed singing, dancing and reading until she started having daily, incapacitating seizures that finally caused learning difficulties and paralysis last year. "Her leg would bend up all the time and she would have trouble walking," the child's mother Crystal Bodley told the outlet.

According to Dr Aaron Robison at Loma Linda University Health, the seizures and inflammation caused Brianna's brain to shrink on one side. Brianna was being treated with anti-seizure medication and steroids when the team of doctors met her in January, however,  the illness continued to worsen. The doctor stated that "Brianna's best option was to shut down half her brain." "Just disconnecting it is enough to stop the disease completely and essentially, potentially cure it," he said.

Mr Robinson said that earlier in the day, shutting down a part of the brain would cause more complications. However, now, the non-functioning part of the brain can be turned off through the

brain's natural opening called the Sylvian Fissure."That enables us to cut away the white matter from the thalamus here," he said.

The California doctors added that even with half of the organ, a person can still live a "whole life". "Brianna will still be the same person, even after disconnecting half her brain," Dr Robison said.

The surgery took 10 hours and the medical professionals anticipate that she will return to her pre-seizure self after undergoing various forms of physical therapy, despite the possibility that she will lose part of her left hand's fine motor abilities and peripheral vision. "After surgery, her entire left side of her body is turned off," Ms Bodley told the outlet.

An Instagram page, run by the six-year-old's mother, documents her journey with the disease and treatment. In a recent update, the mother informed that Brianna is working on balancing skills and her pain is almost gone. "Post op day 10: Brianna is awake all day now. Happy to have my baby back and awake. Still working on balance and learning to walk. Finding things to the left is hard for her. She won't know nothing is there unless she is told. Her pain is under control almost gone," she wrote in the caption..