A mother who followed her mother’s instinct and did not rely on doctors when they told her not to worry about a mark on her daughter’s nose saved the girl’s life after it turned out to be brain tissue.
The incredibly rare condition was diagnosed in the two-year-old girl whose skull had not been closed properly, allowing brain tissue to descend into the nasal cavity.
It was not noticed for the first two years, leaving her at risk from a potentially deadly infection at any stage.
Her mother said that the little girl, Mekrit Malachi, was normal in every way other than a blue-coloured mark on the bridge of her nose that had been there since the day she was born. She had been told not to worry about it despite being seen by several clinics and being given the same information.
When the mother did continue to worry about it and searched for an explanation, she then finally learned from staff at the Shaare Zedek Medical Centre that it was a rare condition that happened only to one in 10,000 births.
They were asked to examine an unusual bump and the experts then confirmed that it was brain tissue that had been an undiagnosed problem for the first two years of the little girl’s life.
They said that a congenital structural change in the toddler’s skull and allowed her brain to push down into the nasal cavity, needing a complex surgery to save her life.
Dr. Nebo Margalit who treated the little girl, said that the blue-black market was easy to confuse for a birthmark, and it was only with the radiographs that had been able to diagnose the problem.
He said: “In the surgery, the skull was opened and we essentially put a plug in the hole at the bottom of the skull. In other words, we closed the floor of the skull, where there had been a hold, preventing the passage of tissue in or out.”
He added that the operation was essential to prevent an infection in the nasal cavity from spreading to the brain and causing meningitis, saying: “The importance of this is that it blocks infection from entering the brain. The nose is not a sterile place and without this operation, there could be catastrophic infection.”
