In a first for Coimbatore Medical College Hospital (CMCH), surgeons from the Department of Urology removed a tumour-affected kidney from 57-year-old woman.
Briefing mediapersons on the surgery here recently, Dean of CMCH B. Asokan said the patient – Veerammal from Gobichettipalayam in Erode – was found to have an abnormally large left kidney. It was 24 cm long (as against the normal average size of 10 cm). The tumour was highly vascular, which could have turned the surgery fatal.
Therefore, the surgeons adopted the angio embolisation technique to block the renal arteries to decrease the blood flow. This shrunk the size of the tumour.
“The kidney's size was reduced to about 18 cm, which was when we removed it,” Dr. Asokan said. Upon further tests, the results showed that Ms. Veerammal was suffering from renal cell carcinoma in the left kidney.
Ms. Veerammal was under observation for two months and her health condition was normal now, with no need for chemotherapy, Dr. Asokan said.
The surgery was done free of cost under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme (CMCHIS).
N. Dhinakar Babu, Assistant Professor at the Department of Urology, CMCH, said that the tumour was malignant and replaced the normal tissues in the left kidney. Dr. Babu and D. Mohankumar and A. Ramesh from the Department of Urology were involved in the procedure.
