Colombian singer Shakira (46) has plenty of reasons to be relieved and calm, after having experienced moments of great tension and anguish. And it is that the complex surgery to which his father William Mebarak Chadid (91) was subjected was successful, and the man is currently recovering after being operated on for hydrocephalus. And there is a particular doctor with whom the singer of “Monotonía” and her entire family have stated that they are eternally grateful: Fernando Hakim.
This Colombian neurosurgeon is a true eminence in interventions of this type. In fact, the valve that Fernando Hakim He placed Shakira’s father bearing his last name, since it is a device that was created by the doctor’s father, Salomón Hakim Dow. This tool has become one of the great advances in neuromedicine.
Who is Fernando Hakim, the doctor who saved Shakira’s father’s life and to whom his family is so grateful?
Hakim’s valve is the name of the device that was placed on the father of Shakira to be able to deal with the normal pressure hydrocephalus suffered by the man in an operation. It bears that name because it was created by Salomon Hakim, a physician descended from Lebanese ancestors who came to Colombina and who dedicated his life to the study of normal pressure hydrocephalus. Furthermore, Solomon is the father of Fernando Hakim, who today continues his father’s legacy. It was the latter who was responsible for the intervention on William Mebarak a few days ago.
“I go down the street and see someone walking badly and I immediately understand that they have this hydrocephalus,” said the doctor. Fernando Hakim Daccach in dialogue with Semana magazine, who interviewed him after the operation on the father of Shakira. In the same interview, the specialist highlighted that one in 200 people over the age of 65 have normal pressure hydrocephalus. “That’s a lot of people,” he added.
the neurosurgeon Hakim Daccach is president of the Santa Fe Foundation, while the intervention to the father of Shakira took place at the Serena del Mar Hospital (Cartagena, Colombia). After being influenced by his father, the specialist continued his father’s legacy in neurosurgery and continues to make history with the valve created by his father.
“It always starts with gait disturbances; the patient experiences a magnetic gait, as if the shoes were made of metal and the floor was a magnet, it is a patient who finds it difficult to lift his feet off the floor. That is the first thing that one note. Imagine: almost my whole life learning at home with my dad, who was the first doctor to describe it,” he continued. Hakim son about the painting for which he operated on the father of Shakira.
Through the valve Hakim -created by Hakim Sr. in 1963 and consisting of a small device measuring just a few centimeters- water can be released into the brain (which, in short, is hydrocephalus). Precisely that large amount of fluid retained in the skull causes swelling in the brain. .
“Hydrocephalus is a disease that is similar to other degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, but the big difference is that it can be cured and the patient’s quality of life can be improved. The challenge is that the diagnosis is not made as my father used to say, to be able to rescue from oblivion many patients who have been told they have no hope. Identifying it in time is giving a father or grandfather back to a family,” added the neurosurgeon who treated the father of Shakirain statements to Semana.
Lack of sphincter control or entering states of loss similar to dementia are also some of the symptoms that can show hydrocephalus in a person.