An aneurysm can be caused by family history of having brain aneurysms, meaning you're more predisposed to having arteries that are a bit weaker, that may eventually develop into a ballooning or a sacular type aneurysm. It also can be aided by people who smoke cigarettes. Blood pressure and hypertension, specifically, can also be a risk factor for someone to have an aneurysm rupture, or even develop an aneurysm.”
One is, if you do have a family history of a brain aneurysm in a first degree relative, especially a ruptured brain aneurysm in someone that's a first degree relative, it's probably not unreasonable to have a screening done to make sure you're not also harboring an aneurysm, because again, if we can catch it early and treat it electively, the overall complication rates and prognosis are very, very good.
The second thing I tell most people is if you're a smoker, stop smoking. That's just the standard advice most doctors are saying, of course. Third thing is if you do have high blood pressure, try to control your blood pressure into a range that's considered normal. Work with your doctor, primary care doc to help with that process. Then exercise and just eating right, taking care of yourself also has been shown to be somewhat protective for just about any arterial problem in the body. Beyond that, there's not a whole host of things someone can do, necessarily, to try to ward off a brain aneurysm, and I think the most important next step in my advice is, there are treatments for it, and there are things we can do about it. If it's caught early, the prognosis is not as doom and gloom as most people associate with the word brain aneurysm, and that you've got a great team and you've got a good group of individuals from both preop to postoperative care, right here in Dayton that can take care of all these problems and have very good success with it.
