Through boy's mouth, doctors cure immobility

CHENNAI: Being sixteen and bedridden while all his friends were in school was not what Muthuraj had expected his life to turn out to be. The boy was suffering from a congenital bone defect that had left him immobile. But a minimally invasive procedure, done through his mouth, at the Government General Hospital two weeks ago changed all that for the teenager.
The teenager, son of daily wage labourers from Tiruvannamalai, was diagnosed with a rare anomaly in which his vertebra was pressing on his brain, causing compression."This left the boy weak, with breathing difficulty. He could not move his hands or legs and he had to drop off school," said head of ENT department Dr R Muthukumar.
The boy was operated upon a year ago, but because of his general growth and constant movement of the neck, the surgery did not yield good results. He began experiencing nervous weakness and also suffered from bladder disturbances.
Doctors from the neurosurgery and ENT departments ran tests on him when he was admitted to GH in December and found that the problem had relapsed.
"A part of his neck bone got displaced and was pressing against his spinal cord," said Dr Muthukumar. On January 12, a team of surgeons performed an endoscopic procedure through the boy's mouth and removed the bony projection and released the compression. The minimally invasive procedure left no visible wound, and the boy had a fast recovery.
"Now he is able to move around normally and if he undergoes physiotherapy regularly, he may be able to join school again," said the surgeon. The procedure, which would have cost 4 lakh in a private hospital, was done free of cost under the chief minister's health insurance scheme, said GH dean Dr R Vimala.