The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : ENT surgeons move into neurosurgery

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Friday, Sep 15, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

ENT surgeons move into neurosurgery

Staff Reporter

Doctors remove brain tumour through nasal route

RARE PROCEDURE: A patient who had a brain tumour removed through endoscopy surgery being examined on Thursday by MMC's ENT surgeon G. Sundhar Krishnan.

CHENNAI : The ENT department is an unlikely speciality for patients with persistent headache and impaired vision to report to. However, that could be a thing of the past with the ENT speciality these days being drawn into closer collaboration with other disciplines, particularly, neurosurgery.

A team of ENT surgeons at Madras Medical College recently used endoscopy surgery to remove potentially malignant brain tumours in two patients.

The patients had the rare disorder of Clivus Chordoma, which if left unattended, could result in death. Its incidence among brain tumours is about 1 per cent. "During the near-two hour endoscopy procedure we reached the problem site in the brain through the nasal route and completely removed the tumour," said ENT and Head and Neck surgeon G. Sundhar Krishnan, lead surgeon for the procedure.

Amaravathi (24) of Gummudipoondi was referred here after ophthalmology sessions failed to ameliorate her double vision or her seven-month-long headache; Prabhakaran (30) from Nagapattinam had twice undergone neurosurgery only for the tumour to recur. Both patients, who are not well off, were treated free.

Only a handful of cases of endoscopy surgery in the treatment of Clivus Chordoma have been reported in the world, MMC doctors said. The benefit of endoscopy is that the nose presents a safer gateway than attempting to open the skull. The procedure is also shorter by several hours and resection or removal of the tumour is comprehensive ruling out recurrence.

According to Dr. Krishnan, general practitioners and even ophthalmologists should also suspect a tumour of this nature if patients report a combination of persistent headache and vision problems.

"We plan to shortly use telemedicine facility to telecast rare surgeries of this nature for the benefit of students as well as other doctors," the MMC Dean Kalavathy Ponniraivan.

In the initial phase, the MMC would link up all Medical Colleges in Chennai before extending the telemedicine loop to other Government teaching hospitals in the State, R. Veerapandian, medical superintendent added.

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