Chennai doctors remove 6.4 kg tumour from patient’s abdomen
Huge tumor virtually pushing into his intestines and other internal organs
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2015-08-20 05:27 GMT
Chennai: With a huge tumor virtually pushing into his intestines and other internal organs causing difficulty in breathing, a 55-year-old farmer from West Bengal had little chances of survival as many doctors declined to operate on him fearing that he would bleed to death.
But doctors at a corporate hospital here removed the tumour weighing 6.4 kg from his abdomen using imported haemostatic agent to arrest bleeding for the first time in India. “We had anticipated massive bleeding. So, we used a new haemostatic agent – Stops Bleeding, an Amylopectin compound that has been released for commercial availability only last month in the U.S. and approved by the USFDA,” said Dr J.S. Rajkumar, chairman, Lifeline Hospitals, who led the team of doctors for this surgery.
This haemostatic agent in powder form was found useful in arresting bleeding from multiple small vessels. “It took about three minutes for the bleeding to stop. We had had apply it many times in several areas to enable us to remove the giant-sized tumour. During the operation we had to administer four units of blood to the patient,” the laparoscopic surgeon said.
“We even resorted to arrest bleeding as we normally follow in gynaecological procedures,” said Dr Deepa Ganesh, consultant obstetrician and laparoscopic surgeon. Doctors S. Prabhakaran, J. R. Anirudh and S. Akbar and anaesthetists Venkat and Sampath were part of the team.
The hospital sought permission from local authorities to import Amylopectin powder. “We found it not only safe but also valuable in complicated surgeries as this,” Dr Rajkumar said.
The patient came to the hospital with swollen abdomen. CT scan showed that the tumour occupied the entire abdomen, pushing the intestine and other organs away. The cause for the tumour’s growth is not known.