What is a "berry aneurysm"?

What is a "berry aneurysm"?

Les Weiner (Former Chair of the Department of Neurology, University of Southern California) gives expert video advice on: How long can a person be in a coma?; What is "persistent vegetative state"? and more...

A berry aneurysm is where two vessels meet and there is a weakening in the wall which begins to pouch out. If it gets big enough or weak enough, it will burst, and there will be a hemorrhage. There are aneurysms in places other than the nervous system, but brain aneurysms are the most dangerous because of the fact that about 50% of the people who have eruption aneurysm, will die from that, either immediately, or in course. Because of better imaging, we are now beginning to give diagnosis of those aneurysms before they erupt, so if I did an MRI of you, and you had three or four of these, but they were one or two millimeters, they would not be about to erupt. But if they were five millimeters, or a centimeter, you'd have to go and get rid of them before they erupted. And then you'd have 100% survival, because they never bleed and they never give you problems.