Kattankulathur, August 19 (MExN): A rare nasal tumour was removed from a four-year-old girl child in a in two well spaced-out precision surgeries at the SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Kattankulathur, recently.
Calling a “first-of-its-kind medical feat,” a press from SRM informed that the tumour had “blocked both her nasal passages and was menacingly extending into her left eye.”
It was a end of a medical saga over a six-month period since the child was brought first by her parents to the Hospital's ENT Out-Patient Department with complaints of nasal blockage, snoring, protrusion of the left eye and excessive tearing from left eye since infancy, it said.
The girl's medical history revealed that a biopsy done on her when she was ten months old in another hospital, had diagnosed a very unusual tumour- Myofibroblastic tumour-, and the child had undergone 30 cycles of chemotherapy, it added.
Despite the treatment, the tumour had grown and and further investigations by expert doctors at SRM revealed a very extensive tumour in the left nasal cavity with extension into the left eye, engulfing the left eyeball and displacing the eye outwards, the release informed.
The team of doctors, including Prof Lt Col Dr A Ravikumar, Dr Shivapriya, Dr B Gayathri, Dr Radhakrishnan, Departments of ENT, Anaesthesiology & Opthalmology of the SRM first did a procedure on the girl child on February 5, 2021.
The tumour then was 'debulked' using a nasal endoscope and only a small incision externally, it said.
After widening the nasal airway, doctors decided to stagger the second operation, pending confirmation of the diagnosis by histopathological examination of the excised tissue.
The examination confirmed it as 'Myofibroblastic tumour', a very rare type of malignancy, especially in a child and that too in the nose. Only 23 such cases have been reported so far, it added
Subsequently, on July 6, 2021, the team of doctors successfully performed the second operation to remove the tumour extension into her left eye and removed the remaining tumour in the 'frontal sinus and orbit' encircling the eye, the release said.
On recovery, the eyeball has regressed back into the socket, the girl's vision has been preserved and she is now normal, it informed, further adding that child is being followed up at “regular intervals and is free from any of her earlier symptoms.”
