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Jack Ottens of Melbourne was never to make his tenth birthday, but the 11-year-old is quite breaking records.
He is one of the youngest patients in Australia to have undergone Gamma Knife surgery.
An AVM is an abnormal tangle of blood vessels in the brain or spine that deflects blood from the arteries to the veins.
Jack spent three hours receiving targeted radiation therapy Tuesday at Macquarie University Hospital in Sydney as part of the procedure to destroy the residual bit of his MAV, and reduce to zero his risk of hemorrhage on the brain.
John Fuller, Neurosurgical Director of the Gamma Knife Surgery Program. a surgery to remove an AVM would not work because it was too deep in the brain.
Dr. Fuller stated that Jack's MAV had been partially erased from linear accelerator radiosurgery five years ago, but more "We are able to contain the dose quite specifically (with Gamma) … and this decreases the risk of bleeding, "he said.
The procedure involved a fixed frame for the skull that creates a much higher accuracy.
A scintigraphy in three months should reveal how the procedure went, but the full results will not be known for years, said Dr. Fuller.
Macquarie University Hospital introduced technology in Australia eight years ago.
Jack's mother, Christine Ottens, told AAP that the only reason he was injured at age five was his head in front of a Melbourne library.
"It was probably a good thing that he had a head injury because we would never have discovered it."
Then in April 2016, at almost 10 years old, Jack had an AVM.
Jack had a headache and vomited before his episode before He was finally treated by the medical team at Monash Medical Center in Clayton
But he had another six months later, but not as bad as the first.
Ms. Ottens went in search of the best treatment for her son and found her in the backyard of Australia – Gamma Knife Surgery – who had an 80% chance of surviving 50% for other treatments.
"It is absolutely miraculous that he is still alive."
"Jack has more than 600 school absences and had to attend more than 200 medical appointments each year" , she said.
Jack also fights hydrocephalus that occurs Ms. Ottens and her husband Chris remortgage their house three times to cover the cost of Jack's treatment and put their Berwick home on the market to treat more than $ 500,000.
But fortunately, this procedure was helped with money from a hospital fund.
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