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Journalism of Courage
For five months, nine-year-old Manoj (name changed) would faint every day. Every single day, without so much as a warning, the boy would press his ears, complain of a strange sensation, pain and then collapse. His father, a carpenter in Gurugram, skipped work on most days to monitor his son’s sudden attacks. “Every time he touched his ears, my heart would stop. I knew what was coming next,” he says. Doctor after doctor would attempt a diagnosis but the fainting spells would not stop. Till they used AI to zero in on a rare neurological condition that troubled the boy.
“With AI helping us save time by going through every research and therapy on his condition, we were able to treat him. Today the boy has recovered, is back to school, sports and leading a normal life like his peers,” says Dr Shashidhar TB, ENT, ENT Surgery, at Artemis Hospital, Gurugram.
WHY DIAGNOSIS WAS COMPLICATED
Sensing a neurological problem, the family consulted neurologists everywhere who did a battery of tests. Some of them suspected epilepsy, psychiatric conditions, and even malingering, attributing it to school phobia. But no medication worked. “When he came to us, everything had already been tried. Anti-epileptic medications, psychological counseling, multiple specialist consultations — nothing worked. The child’s condition was deteriorating, he was missing school for months and the family was at their breaking point,” says Dr Shashidhar.
Manoj’s symptoms were variable. Apart from fainting, he complained of headache, speech difficulties and severe aches in the ear. The team monitored his heart rate, sleep and other parameters. Video recordings of episodes were done to understand the sequence of each episode. All tests were analysed to calculate statistical possibilities of different diagnosis. Nothing definitive emerged. That’s when Dr Shashidhar went back to good old history-taking. “I found that four months before the child experienced fainting bouts, he had viral fever and a severe cold. An MRI showed an infection in the inner ear (that’s why the boy was complaining of sharp pain), which plays a crucial role in balance and spatial awareness. Dysfunction in this system, which can be caused by ear infections, can lead to a type of migraine characterised by vertigo, dizziness and headache.”
‘DOCTOR, YOUR FACE IS LOOKING LIKE A DOG’
It was not any migraine but a rare one. Dr Shashidhar’s suspicions arose when the boy repeatedly told him that he saw not him, but the face of a dog. “Migraines affecting the brainstem (also known as basilar-type migraines), can cause visual hallucinations. These hallucinations can be simple when patients see flickering lights or geometric patterns, or complex, when patients see fully formed images of people, animals, or objects on whoever is in front of them. Children fall unconscious,” says Dr Shashidhar.
HOW AI TOOLS HELPED
Solving such complex migraine cases involves digging through countless research papers, a process that’s time-consuming and often overwhelming. “That’s when we decided to speed things up by using AI tools like Glass Health and Perplexity AI. These give referenced, reliable answers, cutting down hours of literature search to minutes, without the usual hallucinated nonsense,” says Dr Shashidhar.
Dr Trisha Srivastava fed Manoj’s complete medical history, symptoms and test results into specialised AI diagnostic platforms. “Within minutes, these systems analysed patterns that human doctors might miss, comparing the case against millions of medical records worldwide and giving a probability-based diagnosis,” she says.
Among four possible diagnoses, it calculated a high probability for basilar artery migraine, something that Dr Shashidhar had suspected. “Basilar migraine is so rare that many doctors go their entire careers without seeing a case. The AI’s ability to recognise this pattern from subtle clues — the ear sensations, the specific type of headache, the brief visual disturbances — was effective enough,” Dr Shashidhar explains.
THE TREATMENT
The team immediately started Manoj on targeted migraine therapy. The results were nothing short of miraculous. Within a week, the daily episodes that had tormented the boy for five months completely stopped. A month later, he continues to be symptom-free.
“This case demonstrates the transformative power of AI in modern medicine. Instead of subjecting patients to months of trial-and-error treatments, AI can help us rapidly narrow down diagnoses, especially for rare conditions that might otherwise go unrecognised,” says Dr Srivastava. Manoj’s father is relieved as he can go back to work without fear and anxiety. “My son is playing, studying and being a normal child again. We have got our life back,” he says.
As medical AI continues to evolve, cases like these highlight its potential in complex diagnostic scenarios where human pattern recognition reaches its limits. It can help with treating rare diseases that much more effectively.
