How to prevent brain aneurysms? How to decrease risk of cerebral aneurysm rupture? Can you prevent a brain aneurysm? What can you do to prevent an aneurysm? What causes brain aneurysm to form? Leading endovascular and cerebrovascular neurosurgeon shares his view on risks and prevention of brain aneurysms. Dr. Peng Roc Chen, MD. Family history of strokes or unexplained cerebrovascular events can signal a risk factor for brain aneurysm formation. Dr. Peng Roc Chen, MD. Prevent brain aneurysms. Decrease risk of cerebral aneurysm rupture. Video interview with top expert in endovascular neurosurgery. Medical second opinion confirms that brain aneurysm diagnosis is correct and complete. Medical second opinion helps to choose the best treatment for brain aneurysm. Get Medical second opinion on cerebral aneurysm and be confident that your treatment is the best. Risk factors for brain aneurysms are smoking, poorly controlled blood pressure, hypertension, atherosclerosis of blood vessels. Dr. Peng Roc Chen, MD. Not all brain aneurysms rupture. But brain aneurysms tend to rupture at the same age in different generations of one family. Reduce risk of intracranial aneurysms. How to prevent brain aneurysms and decrease risk. 1234 How to prevent brain aneurysms? When the risk for brain aneurysm increases? 1234, MD (Cerebrovascular and skull base neurosurgeon; Endovascular neurosurgeon, University of Texas). This is still one of the questions in the research phase. We gain more knowledge as time goes by. However we do know few risk factors for brain aneurysms. There are some common risk factors. People can learn to reduce risk of developing intracranial aneurysms. In the general population probably 0.9% to 9% nine percent of people might have a small intracranial aneurysm. These facts are based on 1950s to 1980s autopsy data. So this is not perfect, but you can say this is definitely a population-based, but it's meaningful. The truth is that in only a certain small numbers of these patients will have a ruptured brain aneurysm during their lifetime. So there is a fair amount of patients that never rupture a brain aneurysm. 1234 On the other hand, if brain aneurysm ruptures, death rate could be up to 50% percent. 1234 That's exactly correct. That's exactly correct. It is important to think that we know there are risk factors for brain aneurysm development. They are less debatable. It is cigarette smoking, uncontrolled high blood pressure. It is persistently high blood pressure. There are also factors that promote atherosclerotic disease. For example, there are genetic factors. They are hard to determine. Genetic risks for brain aneurysm are hard to change. Control your cholesterol level. Control your triglyceride level. It puts additional meaning on these risks. Anything that can potentially compromise your coronary artery vessels, your body vessels, will also reflect negatively on brain vessels. Therefore, as I emphasized before, cigarette smoking should be the one thing we can eliminate. Stop smoking easily. Alter our lifestyle. Completely eliminate smoking. Blood pressure you can control to decrease brain aneurysm risk. Sometimes you have a blood pressure problem. Dr. Peng Roc Chen, MD. Obviously with certain medications you can get a good control. General health. Exercise is always meaningful. They are things that perhaps are much more difficult to alter. There could be a family history of intracranial aneurysms. Brain aneurysms can happen in about 10 percent of relatives of a patient with the brain aneurysms. Typically cerebral aneurysms happen along the same direct family line. For example, mother has aneurysm and grandmother had brain aneurysm. Mother had a cerebral aneurysm ruptured. So daughter might need to look into potential risk of intracranial aneurysms present. Brain aneurysm will have a potential risk of rupture. We also have a thought about some of the familial brain aneurysms. We call them hereditary brain aneurysms. It could be due to multifactorial genetic involvement. From the clinical standpoint these brain aneurysm patients have a tendency to rupture brain aneurysms at a similar age. Dr. Peng Roc Chen, MD. We don't know why it happens. But we do know that brain aneurysm bleeding is going to happen at a similar age. So this fact needs to be kept in mind. These patients have a family histories with brain aneurysms. Then we recommend these patients early on to have non-invasive imaging study done (MRI angiography). How to prevent brain aneurysms and decrease risk. Can you prevent a brain aneurysm? Can I prevent rupture of cerebral aneurysm? Smoking, hypertension, stroke prevention.