CHENNAI:Facing a flurry of cases involving male children with abnormal urinary tube that requires surgical correction, Paediatric Surgery Department at the Institute of Child Health and Hospital has launched a unit to attend the cases, recently. The hospital has performed 70 such surgeries, including 24 severe cases, in the past six months.
Speaking to CE, Dr R Velmurugan, professor at Institute of Child Health and Hospital, said that abnormal urinary tube or hypospadias, in medical parlance, is a condition in male children that should be corrected early — before two years of age. The child with this condition has to squat to pass urine. If this anomaly is not corrected at an early age, it could become a complicated procedure in his adolescence, he added. Till now, the Paediatric Surgery Department has been performing multiple-stage surgeries to correct the abnormality, but now, after the exclusive unit has been set up, the whole procedure is being performed in a single stage, much to the relief to the child and parents, added Velmurugan. The surgery, which cost around Rs 1.25 lakh, is done free of cost for beneficiaries of Chief Minister’s Health Insurance Scheme.