Doctors of Rainbow Children’s Hospital removed a large tumour from the base of the skull of a four-year-old boy from Oman.
According to a press release, the child was brought to the hospital with symptoms of headache, impaired vision, appetite loss and vomiting. After performing an MRI scan and other tests, the patient was found to have a large “tennis ball-sized” tumour in his skull base, which was compressing the nerves to his eyes. The tumour was a large hypothalamic chiasmatic glioma.
These uncommon tumours accounted for about 3% of childhood brain tumours.
A team of doctors decided to do a surgery using a complex skull base approach. In an eight-hour-long surgery, the tumour was completely removed with the preservation of his vision as well as pituitary gland. K. Santosh Mohan Rao, consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at the hospital, said the child underwent a modified one-piece extended transbasal craniotomy level 2 — an approach to reach the midline section of the skull base, a translaminar terminalis approach, which was a technique to remove tumour and fluid, and a total microsurgical procedure for removing the tumour.
After four weeks of post-operative care, the boy and his parents travelled back to Oman, the release said.
