Why are brain surgeries always a matter between life and death?

The brain controls our hunger, thought, memory, emotion, vision, temperature, breathing, and every singular process that regulates our body. With all of these jobs, the brain is considered the most-important organ in our body. This makes brain surgeries considered to be a matter between life and death, due to the fact that it has dangerous risks, rarity of success, and situations that will happen when surgery turns out to be a failure.

As all surgeries have a variety of risks, brain surgeries also have a variety of dangerous risks that will affect patients’ lives afterward. Due to the important jobs that the brain has, it is very understandable that the risks of brain surgeries are substantial. MAYO Clinic introduces risks of brain surgeries. There are mainly 8 different risks, which are: ‘Change in vision’, ‘Seizure’, ‘Loss of memory’, ‘Impaired coordination and balance’, ‘Storke’, ‘Swelling of the brain / Too much fluid in the brain’, ‘Meningitis’, ‘Muscles getting weaker’. All of these risks are menacing and have a lot of effects on lives. Even though some of the risks won’t make patients face death, some of the risks such as Meningitis actually can. Within these dangerous and fatal risks, it’s obvious that brain surgeries are always a matter between life and death. There’s still a variety of other reasons why brain surgeries are such a menace, and it'll be covered in the following paragraphs.

The second reason why brain surgeries are always a matter between life and death is its rare success rate. Whatever risks there are, if the surgery fails, none of them matters to the patient. Brain surgeries are especially complicated due to the fact that the patient won’t be able to live a normal life with a damaged brain or with no brain. To give a specific percentage of brain surgeries’ success rate, first of all, its rate is different based on what the patient’s diagnosis tells. Firstly, Brain Tumor: its success rate is about 34% for male patients and about 36% for female patients. It’s different for ‘Rupture of a cerebral aneurysm’: its success rate is about ⅓ percent. Even though there are other reasons, the rare success rate especially makes brain surgeries to be considered as a matter between life and death. The following paragraph will introduce another reason why brain surgeries are a matter of life and death, by explaining and showing examples of situations that’ll happen if the brain surgery turns out to be a failure.

If brain surgery turns out to be a failure and the patient gets damage on Brain or even loses the brain, situations followed will be fatal and severe. Due to the important jobs that brain has, when patient loses brain he/she will depend on machines, and when patient gets damage on brain the symptoms will give negative effects on his/her life. Carissa Stephans, a pediatric nurse, informs what happens to a patient who’s brain-dead and with no brain: “After turning off life support, a person who’s brain-dead will die within minutes because they won’t be able to breathe on their own.” According to her words, a patient whose brain-dead is dependent on life support machines to be alive will die within a minute after turning off the life support. The brain controls breathing and every singular process that regulates our body– which means that when there’s no other support to substitute those jobs, patients with no brain and life support will die because they won’t be able to breathe and regulate their bodies. There are 7 main symptoms when a patient gets damage to the brain due to the operation failure: Loss of consciousness, Headache, Dizziness, Decrease in concentration, Fatigue, Amnesia, and Vomit. When the brain is more seriously damaged, patients might experience coma, paralysis of the arm and legs, and cramp. Brain surgeries are always a matter between life and death due to the fatal situations that will happen when a patient gets damage to the brain or even loses the brain due to failure of surgery.