A 14-year-old girl from Malegaon’s Nimbait village with a severe spine deformity was operated on by a team of doctors at the State-run GT Hospital. The multiple curves in Geeta Shewale’s spine were corrected in a seven-hour-long procedure that involved inserting 25 titanium screws and two cobalt chromium rods. Soon after the surgery, Geeta not only had a seven-centimetre-increase in height but also a near normal spine.
Geeta, a Class IX student, suffered from kyphoscoliosis, a combination of outward curvature (kyphosis) and lateral curvature (scoliosis) of the spine. Doctors said that three curves in her spine — 105 degree, 40 degree and 45 degree — had led to sideways bent while one curve of about 90 degrees had led to her bending forward, thus causing a hump in her back.
‘Changing posture’
“When she was about 11, we noticed a change in the way she was walking. Thereafter, her posture kept changing and the deformity became extremely visible,” Govind Shewale, the patient’s father, said.
Over the past few years, doctors from Malegaon said that Geeta’s case was inoperable. One of the doctors referred her to a private hospital in Mumbai where she was told that the surgery would cost over ₹5 lakh and that the hospital did not take patients under the State government’s Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Arogya Yojana (MJPJAY). “With my little earnings as a farm labourer, I could not arrange for a huge sum. Someone suggested that I should go to Mantralaya to seek help with funds. But when I went there, I was referred to the GT Hospital,” he said.
Geeta was operated on July 15 by a team of six doctors, including surgeons Dr. Dhiraj Sonawne, Dr. Ajay Chandanwale, Dr. Bipul Garg, Dr. Omkar Shinde, and other medical staff.
‘Tricky case’
“We had to make a 25 cm vertical incision on the back to get access to the spine. The case was tricky because the curves were extremely rigid and the patient’s bones were soft,” said Dr. Sonawane, an orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in spine and scoliosis surgery. He said that the neuromonitoring process was also carried out during the surgery to avoid any injury to the spinal cord while fitting the screws and rods. Doctors also feared a risk of lung injury, extreme blood loss and paralysis. “But the procedure went well and we have managed a near-normal correction of the spine. The patient is walking straight, without any support,” said Dr. Sonawane.
Geeta’s parents were ecstatic to see their daughter walk normally. “The last few years have been extremely difficult as we were worried about her future, especially her marriage,” said Geeta’s mother Asha Shewale. The surgery was carried out free of cost under MJPJAY and Geeta will be discharged within a fortnight, after her sutures are removed.