By Smoking Christy Bradshaw started smoking cigarettes in the schoolyard when she was 13. Seventeen years later, she had brain surgery to remove three aneurysms caused by smoking. I thought lung cancer was the only thing that could happen, and I thought that happened only to much older people. Cigarette smoking, especially in young women, can cause brain aneurysms, and Dr. Thomas Kopitnik, UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas professor of neurological surgery, said patients like Bradshaw don't know of the danger.
Nicotine attacks the cerebral blood vessels.
This is really a silent killer. Kopitnik said that after seeing a number of young women patients with smoking-related aneurysms, he feels strongly about early aneurysm screenings for women at risk. Bradshaw also wants young women like herself to know the immediate effects of a cigarette. Her family doctor, Dr. Joe King of Nashville, is the one who realized she had something more than a headache. The pain came on suddenly.