West Bengal hospital conducts rare surgery on cancer patient

KOLKATA: A team of doctors at Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) has conducted stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) on a septuagenarian to remove a tumour from the patient's brain. This was for the first time that such a high-end procedure has been done by a government hospital in the state. The patient is likely to be discharged from the hospital in a couple of days. The operation was done within half an hour at CNCI's Rajarhat campus a couple of days ago.
SRS uses 3 dimensional imaging to deliver high dose radiation to the affected area, thus causing minimal impact on the surrounding healthy tissues. Only a few private hospitals in the city have this facility but it is expensive.
The patient who is also a lung cancer patient had started showing problems in his movement recently. On investigation doctors found malignant tumour in his brain. Since the patient was already frail the radiation oncology team decided to perform the SRS.A radiation oncology team comprising doctors Amitabha Roy, Kaustav majumdar, Deborshi Lahiri, Sayan Kundu and Palash Sen, backed by a technologists' team, conducted the procedure.
"The encouragement from our director, Jayanta Chakraboty and department head, Tapas Maji, was a shot in our teams' arm to perform the SRS. We also had solid backup from professor DK Roy and his team from medical physics. After this success, we are planning to conduct the procedure on a few more patients," said radiation oncologist Amitabha Roy. Apart from tumour, doctors said, the SRS could be deployed for other conditions, such as arteriovenous malformation of the brain, which could lead to brain stroke.