A 41-year-old woman from Salem, Gayathri Rajamanikam, who had a large swelling in her neck that was diagnosed as a non-cancerous thyroid nodule, underwent a Radiofrequency Ablation (RFA) procedure at a Chennai private hospital. Local doctors had recommended surgery to remove the entire thyroid gland, which she declined.
According to doctors at the MIOT International hospital, she learnt about RFA and approached them.
“Thyroid swelling is more common among women. If left untreated, it could cause difficulties in breathing and swallowing. Treatment is aggressive in which half or the whole thyroid gland is removed,” Karthikeyan Damodharan, director, Vascular and Interventional Radiology told journalists on Friday.
“As conventional surgery leaves a long wound in the neck, many young women are hesitant to undergo treatment. When we saw her during the first week of February, the swelling had grown six cm in size. We made an assessment and performed RFA of the thyroid nodule,” he said.
The pinhole procedure, done under local anaesthesia as no incision was required, involved passing a probe through the patient’s thyroid gland and directly into the nodule with ultrasound guidance. Radiofrequency waves were emitted from the probe, producing heat that caused the nodule’s cells to die, he explained. The procedure took 45 minutes and left no scar behind.
Hospital chairperson Mallika Mohandas was present at the event.
