5 kg tumour removed from man’s head

MADURAI: A rare benign tumour weighing 5 kg was removed from a 31-year-old man at the superspecialty wing of Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) in Madurai recently. The surgery was performed on Sakthivel of Dindigul on May 16 and he was doing fine, said neurosurgeon Dr J Srisaravanan, who led the team which operated on him.
The senior doctor said he had never seen as big a benign tumour in the head in over 15 years’ time.“The procedure was carried out for close to 10 hours and we were able to remove the benign scalp tumour completely. The patient is fine,” he said.
Dr Srisaravanan said that another surgery, performed on a 63-year-old man with brain tumour, was a “first of its kind” in the state since high precision technology was used. He said the procedure was “fluorescence-guided” as a drug, FL 560 or sodium fluorescein was administered into the vein of the patient, Vanaraj, which helped clearly differentiate the tumour and non-tumour parts of the brain. The tumour part takes in FL560 much more than the non-tumour part, the doctors said. “This, we can visualise immaculately using a special surgical microscope named Leica OHX and the removal of tumour becomes very easy. The microscope is very unique and GRH is the only hospital in Tamil Nadu which has it,” Dr Srisaravanan said.
The doctor said that though the tumour was successfully removed, since it was a case of advanced malignancy, the patient still had to undergo radiotherapy and chemotherapy after which only they could say if he had been completely cured. Vanaraj, who resides near Pannaipuram in Theni district, was brought to GRH with decreased consciousness on May 4 and the surgery was performed on May 9.