Nagpur: It began with a simple, non-painful swelling in the thigh. The soft tissue tumour in the groin of a 21-year-old city youth turned cancerous and had to be removed by specialized surgery that lasted more than seven hours.
As the artery and vein in the right thigh of the youth were completely engulfed by the 10cm X 15cm tumour, they both (vein and artery) had to be cut off with it. Doctors then reconstructed the vein and artery using parts of a vein from the left leg of the patient.
“Soft tissue tumours are not rare, neither are surgical procedures to remove them. In this case, we avoided use of synthetic blood vessels during surgery and used patient’s own vein from another leg to reconstruct the lost vessels,” said vascular and endovascular surgeon Dr Vaibhav Lende, who performed the skilful job of reconstruction of vein and arteries of the patient. Using patient’s own vein proved beneficial and he recovered fast. The patient started walking on sixth day of surgery and was discharged on Thursday.
Vascular surgery is comparatively new for Nagpur. Earlier, patients had to travel to Mumbai or Chennai for such surgeries.
“This is commendable job,” said senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sanjeev Choudhary. “Reconstruction of artery and veins using a cut from another vein requires special skill. Doctors are claiming the patient can walk within six days which is a good achievement,” he said.
Doctors stated the tumour was present in the right thigh of the patient for more than two years and was growing. The growth became rapid in last two months and soon turned painful. This was when the patient came to doctors.
CT scan revealed it to be a big tumour. Removing it was must. Had it grown further, it would have engulfed the bone, nerves and other structures. It would have occluded the vessels of the leg and the patient would have faced disability, or neurological problems, doctors said.
As the tumour was cancerous, oncosurgeon Dr Gopal Gurjar led the team of doctors that performed the surgery. Orthopaedic and spine surgeon Dr Faizan and anaesthesiologist Dr Arif were also in the team.