The teenager has a heart attack after having torn an artery in the neck on a water slide

An adolescent suffered a stroke after ripping an artery in his neck while riding a water slide.

The anonymous 16-year-old presented at Rashid Hospital in Dubai after being unable to walk or stand without help for 16 hours.

He mentioned that he had driven a slide in a water park 12 days earlier, which caused him to experience vertigo that came and went for ten minutes.

The CT scans revealed that the adolescent, originally from Korea, had a stroke in the part of the brain called the cerebellum, which controls posture, balance and coordination.

A further examination showed that he underwent a left vertebral dissection – a tear-like tear to the inner lining of an artery in the neck that supplies blood to the brain.

After being treated with anti-coagulation drugs, the boy recovered completely within three months.

Besides not being able to walk, the boy also vomited and complained of nausea, and could not swallow, revealed BMJ Case Reports.

In the examination, the doctors revealed that he had Horner's syndrome, which is defined with small pupils, drooping eyelids and inability to sweat from the face.

The left side was the most affected, with uncontrolled eye movements, reduced vomiting and almost no pain.

In addition to a haemorrhage to his cerebellum, even a CT showed that he suffered from a left lateral medullary infarct.

This occurs when the blood and oxygen supply are interrupted in the marrow – the part of the brain that controls the body's unconscious responses such as heart rate, breathing and sneezing.

It was too long after the adolescent accident was treated by thrombolysis, which uses drugs to release the thrombus and return the blood supply to the brain. The NHS service recommends that it be carried out within four and a half hours.

It was then treated with another anti-platelet, which was not called, and fed through a tube because of its inability to swallow. The tube was removed after only a week.

The TAC reveals that the adolescent, originally from Korea, had a stroke in the part of the brain called cerebellum, which controls posture, balance and coordination
The TAC reveals that the adolescent, originally from Korea, had a stroke in the part of the brain called cerebellum, which controls posture, balance and coordination

Tears at one of the neck arteries – known as cervical dissection – are a major cause of stroke among people under age 50. Such lesions can cause the development of clots that affect the blood supply to the brain and lead to the deadly lesion.

Many sufferers assume that their stroke occurred spontaneously because they do not classify minor traumas that occur while they are in a theme park, or when swimming or scuba diving as a potential cause.

But the authors wrote: "The minor trauma as the simple neck during the slips on the water can produce cervical dissection." This can happen if a joint is stretched or rotated beyond its normal range of motion.

Stroke can occur even weeks after apparently trivial incidents have occurred since blockages of blood arteries and clots often take several days to develop.

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