Chennai: Chennai, the medical capital has been making headlines for various types of rare surgeries such as keyhole surgery, robotic surgery, HOLEP surgery, Florescence Guided Surgery and others.
Adding to the list is - Awake surgery that Chennai doctors have started performing on children after it turned successful for adult patients over last few years.
A private hospital in Chennai performed awake surgery for brain tumour on a 10-year-old girl last Wednesday. The girl played video games and was talking to her uncle for three hours while doctors removed a 1.5 centimeter broad and 5 centimeter long tumour from her brain.
SIMS Hospital neurosurgeon Dr Roopesh Kumar said the girl has been having fits in the last two months and on diagnosis, a brain tumour was found in an important area of brain which controls the movement of her left half of the body including face, hand and leg. Removal by conventional surgical methods could leave her paralysed, therefore, awake surgery called as awake craniotomy was needed.
Awake surgeries are applicable for speech and brain surgeries as the movement of limbs and speech notify the surgeon to preserve the important nerves supplying the hand, leg and face while the tumour is being gradually removed. If any decrease in the movement of the leg or hand could be noticed, then that portion of tumour can be left behind removing the rest of the tumour.
Talking about the complex surgery, Dr Suresh Bapu, Director, Institute of Neurosciences, SIMS, said, “Only very few instances of this procedure has been carried out in children across the globe. The 10-year-old patient is the youngest in south Asia to have successfully undergone awake craniotomy with Intra operative Neuromonitoring.”
