The Challenge
Three weeks after an ordinary trip, a 33-year-old man from Malaysia began to feel steadily worse. The bouts of dizziness and vomiting he first blamed on travel fatigue would not ease, so he came to Shanghai United Family Hospital (Changning) for help.
During an outpatient MRI, his condition suddenly deteriorated — relentless nausea and vomiting. After emergency mannitol to lower the pressure inside his skull, the scan stopped everyone short: a soft-tissue mass in the right occipital lobe, a large area of surrounding brain-white-matter edema, and a right lateral ventricle compressed and deformed. Further imaging confirmed the gravest reading — a primary lung cancer that had spread to the brain, with marked intracranial hypertension and a midline shift already measured at 1.2 cm.
The Response
The hospital convened a multidisciplinary team spanning more than ten departments — neurosurgery, neurology, general internal medicine, the ICU, anesthesia, cardiology, respiratory medicine, nutrition, and nursing. With the pressure inside his skull climbing, the team made a decisive call: operate on the brain metastasis at once to relieve the intracranial hypertension and buy him a chance.
The Procedure
The surgical team performed a resection of the right occipital lobe mass. The operation went smoothly and brought his condition under control. After a week of intensive treatment in the ICU, he improved enough to move to the general surgical ward, where the nursing team watched closely for any sign of rising intracranial pressure, bleeding, or infection.
The Outcome
His symptoms largely resolved and his indicators returned toward normal; within about three weeks of surgery he was back to normal life. To shape what came next, the hospital convened a third multidisciplinary consultation — oncology, surgery, and pathology together — and built an individualized, whole-course plan. He is now in chemotherapy and recovering well, a thirty-day journey from the discovery of the tumor to a steady recovery.