A nine-year-old girl was recently treated for a rare spinal defect at a city hospital. The child hailed from Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh. She had a hump on her back that was gradually increasing in size, resulting in a curved spine.
Her aunt brought her to Dr. Mehta’s Hospital in Chetpet, where a team led by Parthasarathy Srinivasan diagnosed it as scoliosis. If left untreated, the child could develop further compression of the spinal cord, leading to paralysis.
The hospital crowdfunded her treatment. The doctors used a neuro-monitoring device for the five-hour surgery.
Dr. Parthasarathy, a spine surgeon and head of the orthopaedics department at the hospital, said: “The main challenge of the spine surgery was that she was underweight for her age, so she could not lose more blood. The surgery itself required screws to be inserted into the spine followed by rods to align the spine and straighten it.”
Early detection and treatment could prevent progression of the disease, said Dr. Kannan, the hospital’s medical director.
