George Mukhari hospital becomes first SA institution to perform endoscopic laryngo-pharyngeal surgery
“The patient had colon cancer in the right side of the colon; colorectal surgeons did a right hemicolectomy for him, so that they remove the right half of his colon."
Dr George Mukhari academic hospital became the first South African health institution to successfully perform a minimally invasive endoscopic laryngo-pharyngeal surgery (ELPS) last month.
A team of robotic surgeons from the hospital performed the groundbreaking laparoscopic surgery procedure to remove liver lesions from a 72-year-old male patient.
The man had advanced colon cancer with a tumour on the right side of the colon.
According to a member of the robotic surgeon’s team, Dr Imraan Sardiwalla, the ELPS procedure has not been previously done laparoscopically in the country, and only 10 surgery cases are reported to have been performed to date in the entire world.
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Sardiwalla explained why and how this specific procedure was performed on the patient.
“The patient had colon cancer in the right side of the colon. Colorectal surgeons did a right hemicolectomy for him, so that they could remove the right half of his colon.
“He was then sent to Steve Biko academic hospital for chemotherapy, as he had some lesions in his liver which were quite big. While on the chemo he responded well and those lesions started to respond. We were asked to review them but because of where those lesions were, he needed quite a big procedure on the liver to remove them.
“In order to remove it, we needed to remove a big half of the right side of his liver through a procedure called extended right hepatectomy (ERH). If you do that without doing anything else, then you’ll get liver failure as his liver volume wouldn’t be enough. So, we had to do a procedure that would augment his liver volume.”
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Sardiwalla said the ELPS laparoscopic surgery may be highly complicated, but its benefits are highly visible as this specific procedure sped up the patient’s healing time since his liver grew by almost 180% within just 10 days with the tumour completely wiped out. He has now fully recovered.
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