MEDICAL TOURISM RARE SURGERIES
47-YEAR-OLD SUCCESSFULLY TREATED WITH BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT Dr Rahul Bhargava, Director, Department of Clinical Hematology & Bone Marrow Transplant, Fortis Hospital in Gurugram with his team performed autologous bone marrow transplant where they used Mishra’s stem cells for transplant, thereby reducing the chances of rejection and infections.
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n a ground-breaking procedure, Haematologists and Bone Marrow Transplant specialists successfully treated Anurag Mishra, a 47-year-old man from New Delhi, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for the past seven years. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a life-long condition, known to reduce life-expectancy. MS affects the brain and spinal cord that leads to serious disabilities. The most common symptoms of MS include loss of sensation and balance, restricted arm or leg movement and vision loss in one or both the eyes. Mishra, who was bedridden earlier and is back to his normal routines, was diagnosed with MS -- an autoimmune neuro degenerative disease, where the body’s own defence system starts attacking its nervous system without any specific reason. Unlike the current line of MS treatment, which mainly includes steroid therapy, physiotherapy and symptom management, doctors used Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT).
“In an autologous BMT procedure, the healthy stem cells from the patient are taken out and preserved. Chemotherapy is then administered to reset the body’s immunity and then the stem cells are injected back to rescue the person from the side effects of chemotherapy,” said Bhargava. After the surgery, the patient is kept under isolation for a few months to ensure he/she does not contract any infection. “In this case, when Anurag approached us, he was entirely dependent on others for his basic needs. But within six months of the treatment, he is back on his legs and is carrying on with his normal life,” Dr. Bhargava added. According to the patient, the attacks are sudden and may affect any part of your body, limiting your abilities. “Extreme pain and disabilities this disease gave was scary and left me depressed. I think I am very lucky to get to know about Dr Rahul Bhargava and team, who cured me miraculously,” Mishra said. “Too much delay in the procedure can considerably affect the clinical outcomes. In the case of Anurag, recovery is 90 per cent, which means he received the treatment within recovery time-frame,” Dr Bhargava said.
ONE-YEAR-OLD UNDERGOES RARE LIVER TRANSPLANT SURGERY
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14-hour rare liver graft transplant surgery was performed on a one-year-old girl from Saudi Arabia at Artemis Hospital in Sector 51 in Gurugram in Delhi. Baby Fatima (name changed) underwent the living donor liver transplant, where only one out of eight portions of the liver was used to provide a new liver to her. The surgery called Monosegment (Segment 3) living donor liver transplant is the first such case reported in Delhi-NCR,
in which mono-segmented liver graft has been used, the hospital said. “Apart from this, the use of bovine jugular vein in liver transplant has been reported for the first time in the world, to provide an inflow of blood to the newly transplanted liver as the baby was born with absence of bile ducts and underdeveloped portal vein,” the hospital said. Managing the child during such a long surgery was a tedious and tricky task for the doctors. Born as the third child to her parents, Fatima suffered from unusually prolonged and deep jaundice for months after her birth. Doctors in Saudi Arabia diagnosed her with a rare disease called Biliary Atresia which is found in one in 16,000 live births. The developments of bile ducts in such children are absent. Fatima underwent biliary bypass surgery at a local hospital in Saudi Arabia before coming to India.
60 Medical Tourism Jan - Mar 2020
