Doctors in India recently removed an 800 gram tumour from a three-year-old Afghan boy’s chest. The surgery has given the child a new lease of life.
As per the doctors of Delhi’s Jeewan Hospital who carried out the surgery, the tumor had compressed the whole right lung of the boy who weighed only 10 kilograms. “Because of the tumour, which extended from the back vertebra to the chest ribs, his right lung had totally collapsed and it was creating pressure even on the heart,” said Dr Vipender Sabherwal, the hospital’s Director.
The doctors claimed that though the boy has been taken by his father to multiple hospitals in Afghanistan, none of them actually took him up due to the high risk.
The lung’s right side that was invisible on X-Ray
When the Indian doctors carried out the investigations, the right side of the child’s lung wasn’t even visible on the X-Ray scans. As per the doctors the surgery was challenging since direct risk existed for the heart and lung.
“He could have bled to death on the table. This while the operation was going on blood was being transfused continuously,” Dr Sabherwal said.
In the course of the six-hours long surgery, the doctors removed the whole tumor which was stuck to the back bone as well as the lungs and interior ribs.
“The miraculous part was that once the tumour was removed, the lung started expanding and after 13 hours it became normal,” said Dr Mohit Mathur, one of the surgeons in the operating team.
The doctors said that the tumour has been sent for biopsy so that it could be ascertained if it’s malignant.
Many major media publications have carried the story.
Image credits: hindustantimes.com
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