States »SoutPosted at: Nov 13 2021 2:08PM THANC hosp performs rare robotic surgery, removes bleeding throat tumour on 80-year-old man
Chennai, Nov 13 (UNI) The city-based Head And Neck Centre (THANC) hospital performed
a rare robotic surgery to remove a bleeding throat tumor on a 80-year-old man successfully
recently.
ENT expert and hospital Director Dr.Vidhyadharan Sivakumar, said the patient was referred
to the hospital with gradually progressive lump in throat, difficulty in breathing and change in
voice over the past few months.
He also had recent symptoms of spitting out blood stained saliva, snoring and some difficulty
in swallowing solid food.
The patient also had associated medical problems like profound deafness and history of
recurrent bladder cancer with an ileal conduit at present . He had previously undergone
a robotic surgery for removal of bladder and prostate at another hospital.
On examination, the doctors found 2 cm, reddish, bosselated fleshy tumour mass arising
from the left side of upper larynx going across the midline to the right side, narrowing the
air column and obscuring the view of bilateral true vocal cords.
The mass appeared quite large in relation to the voice box and bled during the endoscopic
examination in the clinic.
In view of this, surgical excision was planned. The pre-operative workup included CT angiogram
and MRI scan to rule out a large feeding blood vessel to the tumour, a hospital release said today.
Left alone, the tumor would have grown and would have caused complete obstruction of the wind
pipe causing a threat to life.
Since robotic surgery would be least invasive and most successful surgical treatment option in the
safe removal of the tumour, an informed decision was taken by the patient and family to proceed
for excision of the laryngeal mass by Transoral Robotic Surgery (TORS) with general anaesthesia
via tracheostomy.
TORS is a surgical procedure which utilises the surgical robot, wherein the robotic arms move
inside the throat through the mouth without any external skin incisions.
The tumour was completely removed with two robotic arms and under good three dimensional
endoscopic vision, without injury to any adjoining muscles or blood vessels and with minimum
blood loss.
The patient was stable during the post-operative period. Voice and swallow rehabilitation was
initiated during the second and third post-operative days.
The tracheostomy tube was removed by the end of the fifth post-operative day and the patient
was discharged from hospital on the sixth day, with no discomfort.
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