BENGALURU: S T Prabhuswamy is 78, has high blood pressure and sugar. He also had a tumour growing out of his kidney and reaching the heart. A team of doctors in the city drained out all his blood, made two tiny holes in his body and removed the entire tumour in a surgery that lasted only 25 minutes. Normally open surgery takes 8-12 hours. The patient is home and getting better.
Dr L N Raju (specialist in Urology and kidney transplant) and Dr Sathyaki Nambala (senior consultant in Cardio Thoracic and Vascular Surgery) from Apollo Hospital and their team successfully performed the surgery within three hours.
Earlier, removal of these type of tumours involved a major surgery where doctors had to make a long incision from the neck to the lower abdomen. Patients could also suffer renal failure and stroke due to heavy blood loss.
Dr Raju told Express, “The patient had renal cancer in a blood vessel called Inferior Vena Cava. The chances of recovery were slim. We wanted to give a full surgical clearance and went for minimal access surgery. We made a small abdominal incision to remove the tumour and a thoracic incision for bypass. We used peripheral blood vessels for pumping out the blood. Most of the blood in his body was removed and he was cooled to 18 degrees Celcius.”
He added, “We had only 25 minutes for the actual surgery - to remove the tumour from the kidney and heart. Blood loss was very minimal at 600 ml.”