Hyderabad: 80-year-old man undergoes 8-hour surgery to correct spine deformity
The elderly man, who was affected with Ankylosing Spondylitis, was unable to walk erect and bend for the last three years. He was so deformed that he was unable to sleep erect and could not see objects in the front due to severe neck and spine deformity
By Newsmeter Network Published on 30 May 2023 10:15 AM GMT
Representational Image.
Hyderabad: After an eight-hour-long complex surgery, life has returned to normal for an 80-year-old man who was suffering from a stiff neck and spine for many years.
The elderly man, who was affected with Ankylosing Spondylitis, was unable to walk erect and bend for the last three years. He was so deformed that he was unable to sleep erect and could not see objects in the front due to severe neck and spine deformity.
In December 2022, the patient met Dr. Krishna Chaitanya, a consultant spine surgeon, at KIMS, Kondapur. After a series of examinations, the doctor suggested a risky but concrete solution to the problem.
“He was advised major surgery called Pedicle Subtraction Osteotomy, which is a highly-advanced procedure that includes huge risk to the patient. But due to advanced technology like navigation and expert surgeons with a dedicated spine team, we counselled the patient to undergo surgery,” said the doctors at KIMS.
What is the procedure?
The procedure involves a fracture of the spine and the removal of a wedge-shaped bone from one part of the spine to correct the deformity.
The angles should be very precisely calculated, as any miscalculation would result in extremely debilitating pain to the patient.
After looking at all the images and calculating various angles, the doctor decided to remove a 30-degree wedge from the L3 vertebrae in the spine, which would result in getting back the spine to near-normal curvature and his forward gaze also back.
Initially, 3D printing of the patient’s spine was done and the deformity angles were calculated.
An 8-hour-long surgery
According to the doctors at KIMS, the surgery was performed in December by using computer navigation and a special operating table which would enable correcting the deformity. The entire procedure was done under Intra Operative Neural Monitoring. It took eight hours for the procedure with 1500 ml of blood loss.
“The expert anaesthesia team was meticulous in maintaining the patient throughout the procedure,” the doctors said.
