Tumor in Child Removed Through India's First Robotic Surgery

India’s first robotic surgery was successfully performed at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, on a child to remove a tumor from an adrenal gland curing the patient’s very high blood pressure and other medical issues, report sources.

"To the best of //our knowledge, it is the first such reported case of robotic pheochromocytoma (large tumor) excision in pediatric age group in India," said the hospital in a statement after the 14-year-old-child was doing well after three-week's of follow up.

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‘India’s first successful robotic surgery was performed on a child to remove a tumor from an adrenal gland.’

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The child, who had reported of sweating, palpitations, breathlessness and high blood pressure, was found to have a large eight centimeter tumor in left adrenal gland, along with high hormone levels, suggestive of pheochromocytoma.

The adrenal gland is a deep-seated gland in the abdominal cavity above kidney, adjacent to biggest blood vessels and important organs of the body. It is usually removed by open surgery, which entails a big cut and long recovery.

"The location and size of tumor, its proximity to vital organs like pancreas and major blood vessels, coupled with small abdominal cavity in a child made it very challenging and robotic platform was chosen to overcome these problems," said Robotic Surgeon Vivek Bindal.

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The child underwent the robotic surgery for two hours that removed tennis ball sized tumor stuck to kidney, pancreas, spleen and large intestine. Keyhole robotic surgery was performed and structures were dissected one by one as the tumor was very vascular with multiple blood vessels.

Another challenge was to maintain blood pressure before, during and after surgery.

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"This rare tumor required meticulous preoperative preparation," said Jayashree Sood, Chairperson, Department of Anesthesia. Even minimal manipulation of adrenal tumor during surgery can shoot the blood pressure to alarming levels, while it falls precipitously immediately after removal of tumor, she said.

The tumor was removed in totality (otherwise it could have turned out to be cancerous) without any significant blood loss. The child was kept in hospital for four days and thereafter was discharged without any blood pressure medication

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Robotic surgery is more advanced than the laparoscopic variant where the surgeon will make small incisions in the abdomen and insert instruments including a camera.

Satish Aggarwal from Department of Pediatric Surgery said: "This was a very challenging case to manage because of wide variations in blood pressure, precarious location of tumor and low reserve in children."

Source-IANS