Boy with birth defect gets surgery

Mumbai: Orthopaedics from the civic-run KEM Hospital carried out a 11-hour-long surgery to treat a 14-year-old boy from Buldhana for a rare congenital anomaly. After the surgery, he is fit, said doctors. The teenager, hailing from Buldhana, was suffering from a rare birth defect due to which his spine had completely tilted from one side. Furthermore, he started losing the sensations in his leg, and if left untreated, he would have lost his ability to walk. Dr Tushar Rathod, an orthopaedic surgeon from KEM hospital, said, “His spine was crooked since birth. He could have started developing some breathing problems  and his spine would have kept tilting had he not been treated at an early age. We carried out the 11-hour-long surgery with 900 ml blood loss.”

“There was a great risk in the surgery. If not done properly, the lower part of his body could have become paralysed. We have treated him with the procedure known as vertebral column resection”, he added.