Kim Kardashian’s Brain Aneurysm Revelation Brings Light to the Diagnosis

Welcome back. Reality TV star and businesswoman Kim Kardashian revealed on the season premiere of The Kardashians that doctors found an aneurysm in her brain. She said that they told her it was caused by stress. The National Institutes of Health says that an aneurysm is a bulge in the wall of an artery that could rupture and cause dangerous bleeding, stroke, or even death if it grows large enough. Let's bring in neurologist Leah Kroll. Dr. Kroll, thank you so much for joining us. Let's start with just how common are aneurysms and can they actually be caused by stress? Lindsey, they're actually pretty common. So almost 7 million Americans are living with aneurysms in the brain. That puts us at about 1 in 50 people. And yeah, in a sense they can be caused by stress. Our classic risk factors that we think of are smoking, high blood pressure, and genetics. But certainly stress can increase the likelihood of an aneurysm forming because it raises our blood pressure and increases levels of inflammation in the body. There's not a direct link though between stress and aneurysms. If it's caught before a rupture, how do you treat a brain aneurysm? I'm glad you asked because the vast majority of aneurysms are caught before a rupture. Typically people who have them are never symptomatic. They never cause any problems. Of course, we do take them seriously. As you mentioned, if an aneurysm does rupture, it can cause a life-threatening bleed in the brain. So the way we handle that is to monitor these patients very closely. We monitor them by looking at images of that aneurysm over time, repeating images, making sure that it's not growing or changing. If there's anything concerning to suggest that the aneurysm is at risk for rupturing, we may need to do an intervention to secure it and prevent that from happening. Are there symptoms people should look out for as possible indicators of an aneurysm? There are a few. Again, the vast majority of people with an aneurysm will have one that is small and doesn't cause any symptoms, and they probably will never know that they even have it. If an aneurysm does grow larger to produce symptoms, typically you're going to look for headaches, changes in vision, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the face, and stroke-like symptoms. Is there a general age, race, sex that this impacts more often? So they're more common in women, and they're also more common as we get older, peaking sort of in the fifth and sixth decades of life. So really in about our 40s, 50s, 60s, that's when we see the most of them. Dr. Leah Kroll, we thank you so much.