BHUBANESWAR : A team of surgeons at the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) here has successfully treated a 31-month-old girl suffering from hepatoblastoma, a rare liver tumour that had spread to her lungs.
The hospital claimed it was the first facility in the state to have carried out the highly complex transarterial chemoembolisation (TACE) procedure on such a young child to remove the tumour. As many as 15 doctors from across seven departments were part of the challenging multidisciplinary procedure undertaken at KIMS.
The child was detected with hepatoblastoma, a rare liver tumour, which had already spread to her lungs. She was immediately put on chemotherapy under the guidance of paediatric hemato-oncologist Dr Palash Das. Though her condition improved, the liver tumour was still too large for surgery.
At this stage, interventional radiologist Dr Swati Das suggested TACE, a procedure where chemotherapy is delivered directly into the blood vessel feeding the tumour. The tumour responded significantly, shrinking enough to make surgery possible.
Subsequently, an extended liver resection (non-anatomical liver resection) was performed by surgical gastroenterologist Dr Vedavyas Mohapatra and paediatric surgeon Dr Varsha M Totadri under the guidance of head of paediatric surgery Dr PK Jena.
“This was nothing short of a medical breakthrough. It was for the first time that such a complex procedure was performed in Odisha on a child so young,” said Dr Jena.