A tumour weighing 1100 gm that had spread from the chest to the spinal cord of a woman was successfully removed by a team of doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Rishikesh. Informing of the success, the chest and cardio thoracic surgeon AIIMS Dr Anshuman Darbari said that the woman, a resident of Haldwani, had been detected with a tumour in the Medical College Haldwani and referred to AIIMS.
He said that after CT and MRI, a biopsy had been conducted on the woman. “The woman was later operated upon and subsequently a 15 cm X 15 cm neuro fibroma type tumour was removed,” he said.
Dr Darbari, further, said that big portion of the dumbbell-shaped tumour had been covering the chest area and some part of it had extended to the spinal cord. The help of the neurosurgeon Dr Rajneesh Arora had been taken and he had done the spinal surgery to remove the tumour, he added.
Dr Darbari said that had the tumour not been operated upon and removed in time, it would have threatened the life of the patient. “She was under increasing threat of paralysis,” he said and added that the operation had cost just ` 15,000 while any private hospital would have charged anywhere between `2 and 3 lakh for it. Dr Darbari further stated that a clinic on cardio thoracic surgery is functional at the hospital.
The AIIMS director Prof Ravi Kant said that the institute is providing benefit of chest and cardio thoracic surgery as this facility is not available in the Government and private hospitals of the State.
He disclosed that process to open an advanced centre for treatment of lung diseases has started and a proposal for it has been sent to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for approval.