A tumour, about the size of a gooseberry, was surgically removed from the left eyeball of a woman in a rare nose endoscopy surgery at KIMS ICON Hospital here.
The 34-year-old housewife of Yalamanchili in the district, was suffering from headache and bleeding from her left nostril. She approached the ENT Department of KIMS ICON. Dr. T. Sai Balarama Krishna, Head of the Department, identified the tumour in her eye. after performing various tests, and removed it with nose endoscopic surgery in consultation with an ophthalmologist.
Such nasal problems would be usually diagnosed with nose endoscopy but such an examination had not revealed any problem. A CT scan of the nose and sinuses revealed a tumour in the left orbit or the eye ball socket, pushing the eyeball outwards and will cause pressure on the eye ball muscles and the nerve, if left unattended, Dr. Balarama Krishna said in a statement.
Eye surgeries like DCR and optic nerve decompression used to be performed through nasal endoscopic route in the past, but removal of eye ball tumour through nose was rare and requires skill and precision apart from high-end endoscopy equipment and instrumentation, he said.
The inner membrane of the tumour was tightly attached to the muscles of the eye ball and it was removed totally, without any damage to the surrounding tissues. The patient said that she had suffered a minor head injury six years ago. If the tumour had not been removed, the pressure on the eye would have increased and there would have been a risk of complete loss of vision.
The tumour biopsy has reported it as epidermoid cyst. It was confirmed that there were no cancer features in the histopathlogy examination by the pathology lab. The patient recovered rapidly after the surgery. She said the bleeding had stopped and the headache had completely subsided. She was subsequently discharged, Dr. Balarama Krishna said.
