Dr. Dre’s aneurysm and strokes

Hip-hop artist and Grammy Award–winning producer Dr. Dre said that after being hospitalized for a brain aneurysm in 2021, he had three strokes over a two-week period. Dre, 59, spoke about

his health issues in a March 14 interview on the podcast _This Life of Mine_ with James Corden on SiriusXM. He said he woke up feeling pain behind his right ear. “It almost felt like the

worst pain I ever felt,” he told Corden. “I got up and I went on about my day, and I thought that I could just lay down and take a nap.” Luckily, his son and a female friend told him he

needed help. They took him to urgent care, where he was sent on to a hospital. “Next thing you know, I’m blacking out,” he said. A WEAK HOSE READY TO BURST A cerebral aneurysm is a weak area

in a blood vessel that usually enlarges, according to the American Heart Association. Sometimes that weakened blood vessel will bulge out and rupture, causing a hemorrhagic stroke. Thabele

Leslie-Mazwi, M.D., a professor of neurology and Warren and Jermaine Magnuson Endowed Chair in Medicine for Neurosciences with the University of Washington School of Medicine, said this

type of stroke is extremely dangerous. When an aneurysm ruptures, blood leaks out, and symptoms, like a terrible headache, can ensue, says Leslie-Mazwi, who adds that the headache Dre

experienced is a classic symptom of hemorrhagic stroke. “It’s like a little tiny explosion that goes off in your head when the aneurysm ruptures,” he says. People can have different

reactions after the rupture. Some may try to lie down in hopes they’ll feel better. Some people vomit. Some people lose consciousness. “Sometimes [people] die on the spot,” Leslie-Mazwi

said. “It depends on how bad the rupture is, how much blood leaks or the pressure is.” He said when people delay getting care, things only get worse. The blood that leaks out into the brain

causes a cascading host of problems, including irritation of unruptured blood vessels. “I always use the analogy of stepping on a garden hose,” Leslie-Mazwi said. “When those vessels get

irritated they spasm down, they tighten down, and it’s like stepping on a garden hose and limiting the flow to your sprinkler.”  When those vessels are tightened, blood can’t get through

them fast enough to supply the brain with the blood it needs, causing further damage, including further strokes. “If you go to the hospital and you survived that initial rupture, the major

cause of longer-term challenges is that you had big strokes, ischemic strokes, after your hemorrhagic stroke because of this blood vessel tightening phenomenon.” Ischemic strokes, the most

common type of stroke, are caused by a blocked vessel, as opposed to the burst blood vessel that occurs in hemorrhagic strokes.