The Jos University Teaching Hospital, JUTH, at the weekend, undertook its first surgery to remove brain tumor using a machine that drills the skull bone to gain access to the tumor.
“It is the first Trans-labyrinthine approach to a posterior fossa tumor. We used the C-Arm machine to drill the skull bone so as to see what is behind even while facing the front of the head.
“In the past, we had to open the brain which was always risky and led to deaths because the brain is delicate,’’ Dr Origoya Peter Binitie, the lead neurosurgeon in the operation, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Jos.
He said that the tumor had been in the woman for three years before the surgery.
“Half of her face was affected and she could not hear with the ear affected,’’ he explained. He added that the operation was a combined effort by neurosurgeons, Ear-Nose-Throats (ENT) surgeons and the Anaesthetists.
Binitie, who described tumor as an abnormal growth of tissue largely outside the brain stem, said that the new approach helps the surgeons to navigate around the head to see all sides at the same time.
“In the past, we used X-rays to ascertain the position of every part of the head; that involved moving the X-ray machine up and down to, and from, the theatre.
“That process usually takes a longer time and will not give us the position of a bone or the tissue in real time. But with the new machine, it is very quick and saves more than two hours.
“With the new device, we can easily get the picture in motion. While the X-ray is static and one must wait for results, the new device is a kind of video where one can see the picture in motion, instead of static motion.
“The new device is also more accurate, can tell you exactly where you are and saves cost because you spend less time on anaesthesia which minimise the money you pay for that particular service.
“We can also ease our job by taking the picture up, down, front, back or sideways,’’ he explained.
Binitie, first neurosurgeon in northern Nigeria, who had been in service since 1974, said that the cost of such operation was “around N300,000 in JUTH’’.
“But it costs several millions of naira in other hospitals and even more when done outside Nigeria,’’ he said.
The expert said that there were a total of 90 neurosurgeons in the country, adding that more were being trained to meet rising demands.
Speaking on the C-Arm device, Prof. Edmund Banwat, Chief Medical Director of JUTH, said that it cost N32 million, adding that more equipment were being acquired to improve service delivery and break new grounds.
Banwat said that a German NGO, Christofell.Blindmission (CBM), recently donated an operating microscope to be used by the ophthalmology (eye) department. (NAN)
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