A team of doctors from the Government Hospital, Mettupalayam, recently performed a complex pancreatic surgery on a 12-year-old girl from Annur.
The girl had been suffering from recurrent episodes of abdominal pain, vomiting and digestion related problems since her infancy.
She was diagnosed with a congenital condition called pancreatic divisum due to which her pancreas had developed as two different parts with separate draining ducts as against a single gland with a single major ductal system in normal case.
According to a release, the major duct was not well developed with obstruction at its orifice that caused poor drainage of pancreatic juices into the intestines.
The pancreatic head was slowly damaged and the duct got filled up with stones, a condition called chronic calculus pancreatitis. Doctors found that the girl needed to undergo Frey’s procedure, in which the deceased portion of the pancreatic head is cored out, and a drainage procedure called lateral pancreaticojejunostomy.
Special instruments
The government hospital’s Chief Medical Officer Kannan and chief paediatric surgeon from SGK Hospital Vijayagiri formed a team and special instruments and suture materials were brought from Coimbatore.
The procedure, which costs ₹ 3 to ₹ 4 lakh if done in a private hospital, was done free of cost under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme.
The release said it was the first time a taluk-level government hospital performed such a procedure in Tamil Nadu.