Chennai Apollo Hospitals performs rare surgery

Tirupati: Apollo Hospitals, Chennai performed India's first multimodal management of bone metastasis from kidney with single stage mega prosthesis replacement of Femur & Laparoscopic Nephrectomy. Speaking to media here on Sunday, hospital's senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Vijay Kishore Reddy said a 54-year-old woman from Assam had sustained fracture of her left thigh bone and suffered with a trivial injury two months ago and was unable to move around.

On evaluation and a biopsy, she was diagnosed with metastatic left renal cell carcinoma which is a cancerous lesion of the kidney. As a novel attempt, specialists performed two procedures on the patient simultaneously at Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. Both the procedures were completed in six hours.

The knee joint containing the tumour was removed with wide margins and replaced with a mega prosthesis. The patient also underwent a laparoscopic radical nephrectomy (removal of kidney) which was performed through three tiny 5mm holes in the abdomen in the same sitting. After the procedure, the patient was mobilised the very next day and made to walk. In view of local nodal spread in the CT scan, comprehensive nodal clearance was also performed in order to give a better survival rate.

Dr Vijay Kishore said in this current pandemic era, patients with cancer often present late due to travel restrictions and fear of Covid. This has led to undue delay in diagnosis and treatment, resulting in late presentation of tumour at its final stages that has spread everywhere. Early detection through a multi-modal approach and treatment is the key for tackling this deadly disease, he said.