Operating on a Cavernoma

BBC Four is featuring an operation to remove a cavernoma in its new series Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery which starts at 2100 BST on Wednesday 20 August.

Twenty-eight year old Kathryn Proctor, a florist, had been having epileptic fits for about four years.

"It started off with eye spasms - they were actually seizures and they developed into full fits.

"The fits can be controlled with medication but they found a lump on my brain and there's a 50% chance that it's causing the epilepsy.

"It's on the right-hand side, about halfway up on the frontal lobe."

The lump they found was a cavernoma, an abnormality in one of the veins in her brain. It had to come out, not only because it was triggering fits but because it could haemorrhage.

Kathryn agreed to let us film her operation as part of a series I was making, Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery. In fact she not only agreed, she was enthusiastic. [...]

    — news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7568156.stm