54-year-old auditor Logananthan (C) with

Chennai: Part of brain peeks out of man’s ear, doctors plug the hole

CHENNAI: When 54-year-old auditor Logananthan felt a pink, soft and insensitive mass inside his ear, he thought it was some growth that made him hear odd sounds. But after a peep into his ear hole, his ENT specialist suspected it to be a part of his brain . The neurosurgeon and a series of scans confirmed it.“We have seen the brain through the ear with naked eye,” said Apollo Hospitals neurosurgeon Dr Joy Varghese. “We waited for the scans, which confirmed it was a part of the temporal lobe. We convinced the patient to undergo a procedure to close the hole in the acoustic canal that exposed the brain,” he said.Leaving the brain exposed could cause life-threatening infections or complications besides vision impairment (that part of the brain controls vision).During the eight-hour surgery, Dr Varghese removed a small piece of the skull and peeled out the inner softer portion of the skull and used it to plug the 10x6mm hole in the ear.Around the same time, head of ENT surgery Dr K Krishna Kumar removed the prolapsed brain tissue and sealed the defect from below.“The sound I was hearing was my brain pulsation to the lub-dub sound of the heart. I knew I had to undergo a surgery, but I was scared. Now, after the surgery, I'm fine and don’t hear odd noises,” Loganathan said.The auditor who works in a private company in Erode had complained of periodical headaches and right ear pain for the past one year. He was prescribed ear drops for infections. He had even undergone a surgery --tympanomastoidectomy -- to prevent repeated ear infections.A few months later, he started developing further complications including a clear watery discharge from his right ear and persistent headache.Doctors could not point to the exact reason for the brain prolapse but suspect that either it might be the result of an accident that the patient had met with 10 years ago or an undiagnosed prolonged ear infection.Dr Varghese said the part of the temporal lobe responsible for memory and emotions would not affect the patient because it was a small area. “He is doing much better now,” he said.