In a first-of-its-kind surgery, the doctors at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital conducted a robotic TB spinal surgery on a 10-year-old boy whose spine was bent because of pus collection and infection in tissues. While the robotic procedure of spinal fixation has existed earlier, this is the first time in the country that a full-fledged robotic surgery was performed for this particular condition.
The patient, Shivam Kumar, suffered from a collapsed vertebra at the mid chest level leading to compression of the spinal cord along with a large collection of pus in that area. A resident of Jharkhand, the boy had been getting continuous bouts of high fever since March. It was around May though that he could not even sit down. He was then taken to Patna to get further checkups done. However, his diagnoses itself took almost two months.
Initially diagnosed with Tuberculosis, the boy was referred to Indraprastha Apollo Hospital where doctors after reviewing the case suggested robotic surgery as the best treatment option. “Standard surgery involves a large cut in the chest and over the back, with prolonged hospital stay. Pain after the procedure can make the recovery and return to normal activities slow. After review of scans, it was felt that the procedure can be attempted robotically and if successful would give the child benefit of this latest technology,” said Dr Rajendra Prasad, senior consultant of neurosurgery.
“We wanted to do the surgery with few small incisions rather than one large incision. This has a better outcome than open surgery, including fewer surgical site infections, less pain and shorter hospital stays. Though these machines we operated with are still not completely made for surgery, we took a call to go ahead with it,” said Dr Arun Prasad, senior consultant of minimal access surgery.
Doctors performed the surgery on Shivam on July 15. The procedure took about two hours and once Shivam recovered from the procedure, the vertebrae were fixed from behind a week later so as to enable early mobilisation. “Shivam can now walk very comfortably,” said Dr Arun.