11-year-old’s rare cancer removed from heart in Raipur, Chhattisgarh's biggest hosp claims world first

RAIPUR: In a surgery doctors describe as exceptionally rare, a team at Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Memorial Hospital in Raipur has removed a stage-3 invasive thymic cancer from an 11-year-old boy, with the state-run hospital claiming the case could mark a world first in terms of the patient’s age.Hospital authorities said medical literature has so far recorded a 12-year-old as the youngest reported patient with this type of cancer, while the Raipur team successfully operated on an 11-year-old boy from Janjgir-Champa district.The surgery was performed around six months ago by the heart, chest and vascular surgery department headed by Dr Krishnakant Sahu. After surgery and 25 cycles of radiation therapy, the child has now recovered and returned to school, even appearing for his Class VI examination this year.

Doctors said the boy had been suffering for about six months from chest pain, heaviness and breathlessness. Investigations revealed a large tumour in his chest, tightly adherent to the heart and major blood vessels. After several hospitals reportedly declined surgery because of the risk involved, he was referred to Ambedkar hospital.What made the case especially challenging was the spread of the tumour. According to the medical team, the cancer had involved the heart, pericardium, phrenic nerve, aorta, main pulmonary artery, left atrium and part of the lung.

Such cases, doctors said, are considered extremely difficult because achieving complete tumour removal is often close to impossible.The tumour was later identified as invasive thymic carcinoma, type-B thymoma, stage 3, a disease usually seen in people between 40 and 60 years of age and rarely found in children.To remove it, surgeons used a dual-approach technique involving both sternotomy and thoracotomy — incisions through the breastbone and chest wall — because of the tumour’s large size and its attachment to multiple organs. The excised tumour measured about 12x8 cm and weighed nearly 400 grams.Doctors said the four-hour surgery was carried out with a heart-lung machine kept ready for any emergency.Now, six months on, the boy is said to be fully healthy and has resumed school. The hospital said the rare case was presented at a national cancer surgery conference, where it received a best paper award, and preparations are underway to submit it to an international medical journal.Health minister Shyam Bihari Jaiswal congratulated the medical team on the achievement. Pt Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Medical College dean Dr Vivek Choudhary said the surgery showed that even highly complex procedures were now being successfully performed in state-run hospitals, reducing the need for patients to travel to metro cities.Ambedkar hospital superintendent Dr Santosh Sonkar said the successful operation once again demonstrated the capability of the hospital’s heart, chest and vascular surgery unit, which handles most of the state’s chest, lung and mediastinal cancer surgeries.