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Kidney tumour removed through unusual surgery

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, AUG. 25. You could have passed him by without realising the "ordeal" that he has gone through. But now an "unusual" operation later, Dalip Singh is a happy, healthy person looking forward to the prospect of a better life ahead. A resident of Chamba in Himachal Pradesh, Dalip was being investigated for pain in the left abdomen and was discovered to have multiple tiny tumours in both his kidneys.

"On the left side there was a large tumour of 5 cm in the lower part of the kidney and another 1 cm tumour alongside. The problem with these tumours was that although benign, they have a significant risk of bleeding once they grow larger than 4 cm," explained Dr. Ajay Sharma, consultant urologist, laparoscopic and endourologist of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Dalip this month underwent, a rather "unconventional" surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital for removal of his tumour. The doctors in this case deviated from the usual method of operation and took recourse to a more wider know technique in the West of operating with a much smaller area "cut".

"The treatment for a case like this one means that the doctor removes a part of kidney bearing the tumour while saving as much of it as possible. This requires a conventional 15-20 cm cut on the side of patient's body, cutting off blood supply to the kidney while tumour is being removed, sealing the blood vessels on the cut surface of the kidney and then restoring the blood supply to it. All of this has to be achieved within 30 minutes otherwise the kidney may be damaged due to lack of blood supply," explained Dr. Sharma.

But what the doctors did in this case was to operate Dalip, and work through a cut of 7-8 cm which though much more challenging was immensely beneficial for the patient. The operation -- Laparoscopic Partial Nephrectomy -- was conducted successfully on Dalip by the team at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital which they claim might be the first of its kind in the country.

"The advantage of laparoscopic surgery are now well known. There is less post-operative pain, early recovery, less blood loss and minimal scare of operation. The patient started eating normal diet on third day and was moving about comfortably. He was discharged from hospital on fifth day of the surgery. We are happy with the progress of the patient and are hoping that we will be able to help more people," said Dr. Sharma.

But the operating physician warned that not everybody was an ideal candidate for the operation. An ideal candidate for this kind of an operation is a person who has a tumour smaller than 5 cm and a large part of whose kidney can be saved.

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