Hyderabad, TELANAGANA :
Hyderabad :
A nine-year-old boy born with a rare spinal chord development defect got a new lease of life after doctors at a city hospital performed a first-of-its-kind procedure on him.
According to doctors at MaxCure Hospital, Nizar was brought in with complains of breathing difficulty. Investigation revealed that he had developed two swellings -one in the neck and the other in the chest – that were compressing his oesophagus (food pipe) and trachea (windpipe), causing breathlessness.
“While this kind of a spinal cord defect is common in the lower spine, it is very rare in the neck region (which was the case with the young boy). So far no such case has been successfully treated anywhere in the world,” claimed Dr Ratnakar, consultant neurosurgeon at MaxCure. He said Nizar had breathlessness since his childhood.
Doctors had to perform the surgery in three sittings, to address the complication.”This is a rare case because a thoracic (chest) component was different (it was a remnant of gut or extra gut) from the neck component, which accumulated fluid and was increasing in size and compressing important structures,” said Dr Krishna Prasad, the director and the chief cardio thoracic surgeon at the hospital.
He said, “Removal of this (swellings) could be fatal. We managed it with two-staged operations and drained the fluid completely without any damage to chest structures.”The total cost of the treatment was around Rs 10 lakh. While the hospital bore most of the expenses, Aarogyasri dispensed Rs 1.6 lakh towards the procedure.
source: http://www.timeofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Hyderabad News / TNN / February 16th, 2017