Sir Ganga Ram Hospital conducts robotic surgery on 14-year-old

The key-hole robotic surgery went on for two hours to remove tennis ball size tumour

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi recently carried out a robotic surgery on a child to remove a tumour from adrenal gland that was causing very high blood pressure and other medical problems.

“To the best of our knowledge, it is the first such reported case of robotic pheochromocytoma (large tumour) excision in paediatric age group in India,” said the hospital in a statement after the 14-year-old-child was doing well after three-week’s of follow up.

The child reported sweating, palpitations, breathlessness and high blood pressure and was found to have an eight centimetre tumour in left adrenal gland, along with high hormone levels, suggestive of pheochromocytoma.

“The location and size of tumour, its proximity to vital organs like pancreas and major blood vessels, coupled with small abdominal cavity in a child made it very challenging and robotic platform was chosen to overcome these problems,” said Robotic Surgeon, Vivek Bindal.

The child underwent the robotic surgery for two hours that removed tennis ball sized tumour stuck to kidney, pancreas, spleen and large intestine. Keyhole robotic surgery was performed and structures were dissected one by one as the tumour was very vascular with multiple blood vessels.

Another challenge was to maintain blood pressure before, during and after surgery.

“This rare tumour required meticulous preoperative preparation,” said Jayashree Sood, Chairperson, Department of Anaesthesia. Even minimal manipulation of adrenal tumour during surgery can shoot the blood pressure to alarming levels, while it falls precipitously immediately after removal of tumour, she said.

Reportedly the tumour was removed in totality, without any significant blood loss, which could have turned out to be cancerous. The child was kept in hospital for four days and thereafter was discharged without any blood pressure medication

Satish Aggarwal, Department of Paediatric Surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, “This was a very challenging case to manage because of wide variations in blood pressure, precarious location of tumour and low reserve in children.”