In less than a year, two persons, including a toddler underwent different versions of the same procedure for a rare condition at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital here.
The surgeries were performed for aneurysm in the aorta, the blood vessel which supplies blood after passing through thorax and in the abdomen, divides into two branches as common iliac artery.
Vascular surgeon T. Vidyasagaran and his team performed the first of the surgeries in May on three-year-old S. Srivatsan of Padavedu village. A vein from his thigh was used for the graft. “His parents noted a swelling in the abdominal region and took him to a hospital in Vellore after which he was brought to the GH. “We took a CT angiogram and were able to find the exact extent of the lesion. The aneurysm dilatation was at the point where the main abdominal aorta divides into two, said Dr. Vidyasagaran.
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The use of a synthetic graft was ruled out as it would not hold when the child grew up. “So, we harvested the vein from the child’s thigh and did a size and length match for both the arteries,” Dr. Vidyasagaran said. The work was published in the international journal Annals of Surgery.
A couple of weeks ago, a synthetic graft was implanted on a 22-year-old man from Keelnedungal Village, Pallipattu, Thiruvallur district, who had a similar aneurysm in the artery of the upper limb. He was diagnosed as having pulmonary tuberculosis and was administered anti-TB therapy but developed acute swelling in the right side of the neck and severe pain in the right arm. The graft costs around Rs. 28,000 to Rs. 35,000 and was done under the chief minister’s health insurance scheme.
The child had not required any synthetic graft and hence, did not require to be operated under the health insurance scheme, he said.
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