NEW DELHI: A 65-year-old woman from Bihar, who suffered a spinal fracture, has received a new lease of life after undergoing a short-term “new-age medical procedure” at a leading private hospital, doctors said on Thursday.
Taking into consideration the risk factors, the doctors performed a “vertebra stentoplasty procedure” rather than choosing the traditional method of surgery as the patient was in immense pain and had suffered the fracture about a month ago, they said.
The hospital, in a statement, claimed the surgery was performed in a “mere 25 minutes” with the help of the “new-age medical procedure”, a first for north India. “In stentoplasty, an expandable cage made of titanium is inserted into the collapsed/fractured vertebra. The cage is then expanded inside lifting the collapsed bone and restoring the height. The stents are left inside and finally, the vertebral body and the stents are filled with bone cement,” Fortis Escorts Hospital said.
A team of doctors led by Dr Kaushal Kant Mishra, director, orthopaedics and joint replacement, along with Dr Ravindra Singh Bisht, consultant, spine surgery, performed the surgery recently at the hospital. The patient had suffered a fall at her home in Bihar and was admitted to a local hospital in her hometown Begusarai, the statement said.
“The patient was diagnosed with a compression fracture of the L1 vertebra (topmost section of the lower back) which had led to a significant pain, inability to stand and walk due to, loss of L1 vertebra height,” the statement said.
She was advised bed rest and medications, however, even after a month, there was no improvement in her health. She was later referred to Fortis hospital here and admitted in the emergency unit, doctors said. Post-medical evaluation, it was observed that there was an “osteoporotic compression fracture of the vertebra”.
The patient also had a medical history of osteoporosis, hypertension, diabetes, coronary artery disease and osteoarthritis which were major risk factors while performing the surgery, they said.
Taking into consideration the risk factors, the doctors decided to perform a stentoplasty procedure rather than the traditional method of the surgery, the hospital said. “Stentoplasty is similar to other stenting procedures that uses a titanium stent to aid the kyphoplasty procedure for precision. Vertebral stentoplasty can be conducted under local anaesthesia like cardiac stenting,” Mishra said.
“The patient can walk after the surgery as there is fast recovery and there are no complications involved, leading to a better quality of life. In this case, we left the stent inside the vertebra where chances of cement spill are minimal with reduced neurological complications. The height of the vertebra improves. The surgery was performed in mere 25 minutes and the patient was discharged within a day,” he said.
‘Surgery was performed in mere 25 minutes’
The doctors performed a “vertebra stentoplasty procedure” rather than choosing the traditional method of surgery as the patient was in immense pain and suffered the fracture about a month ago. The hospital said the surgery was performed in “mere 25 minutes” with the help of the “new-age medical procedure”, a first for north India.