The Augusta Chronicle: Once rare ailment seen more often

Two-year-old Adalyn Dempsey, of Dearing, toddled around a playroom on the fourth floor of the Children’s Hospital of Georgia at Augusta University, blissfully unaware she has a serious medical condition that also connects her to a very famous golfer who co-founded Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament.

Adalyn has Chiari Malformation, and the late Bobby Jones had a related condition called syringomyelia that he lived with from 1944 until his death in 1971, according to the Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation. There is a Bobby Jones Society that supports the work of that foundation and his grandson, Dr. Robert Tyre Jones IV, sits on its board.

The diagnosis actually covers a wide range of conditions and symptoms but is characterized by an inadequate amount of space at the back and base of the skull that can force part of the brain called the cerebellum through an opening for the spinal cord and press on the brain stem, and can sometimes block the normal flow of cerebral spinal fluid.

The Augusta Chronicle: Once rare ailment seen more often

April 6, 2017