Rare surgery on newborn at Kauvery Hospital
Posted on: 11/Apr/2017 2:48:46 PM
A team of doctors at the Kauvery Hospital performed a very rare and complicated surgery, successfully saving the life of a newborn baby. The baby was born with a huge tumor that was prenatally detected during pregnancy, and was operated on the 12th day of her life.
Dr. Aravindan, Executive Director at Kauvery said, This case was referred to Kauvery from a private Medical College hospital, because of the fact that Chennai Kauvery has an expert team of Spine and Neurosurgeons, Paediatric Surgeons, Paediatric Anaesthesiologist and a state-of-the-art Paediatric ICU. We are keen on doing such complex surgeries, as we are equipped with internationally trained doctors and world-class infrastructure.
Addressing the media, Dr. G. Balamurali, Spine and Neurosurgeon said, She was detected with a very large tumor during the 20th week of pregnancy. The tumor was almost the size of the child’s head and increased in size within 5 days after birth. She was taken up for a major surgery on the 3rd of April 2017. The baby could not lie on her back as the tumor was located on the back of the spine. It was very aggressive-looking and vascular. Pre-operative workup with MRI, blood tests including tumor markers were done to study the case thoroughly.
A team of doctors led by Dr. G. Balamurali, Spine and Neurosurgeon, along with Dr. Sivasankar Jayakumar, Paediatric Surgeon, Dr. Sathish Manivel, Plastic surgeon and a team of Pediatric Anaesthetists at Kauvery hospital, Chennai performed the surgery for seven hours and successfully removed the entire tumor, with very minimal blood loss.
Dr. Sivasankar Jayakumar, Paediatric Surgeon added, The tumor is most likely to be a Teratoma or a Rhabdomyosarcoma which was eroding the vertebrae of the spine. The baby was well on the third day, following surgery without any problems and will be ready for discharge soon. We are very happy that the parents acted quickly and decided to keep the child though the tumor was detected early. The patient was operated under the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Scheme as the parents are very poor and could not afford the normal surgery cost. he added
Dr. Sathish Manivel, Plastic surgeon, said, We also want to highlight that this is a very rare tumour of this size for which we are awaiting the biopsy results. The incidence of a Rhabdomyosarcoma is about 1.5 per million newborns and rare to grow to this size at birth. This is a malignant tumour and requires further chemo radio therapy. Such rare tumour can be detected during routine ultrasound during pregnancy and should not be considered for termination. Careful planning of delivery by an expert team and immediate surgery can lead to good outcomes in such cases.
The reason to highlight this case is that such babies born with Spinal Cord Congenital problems or tumors should be transferred to higher centers, having expertise in dealing with complex conditions, he added.
