6-Year-Old Child Undergoes Complex Brain Surgery In Sitting Position To Remove Tumor

A 6-year-old boy from Mongolia underwent a complex surgery to remove a tumor of more than five centimeter in size in his brain.

The doctors said the surgery was "extremely risky" as the tumor was in an inaccessible part of his brain. The patient, identified only as Monkh, was reportedly suffering from bouts of headache and vomiting for the past one year, the Times of India reported.

The doctors in Mongolia then discovered a tumor growing in the middle of the child’s brain, just behind the brain stem.

Tumors in this part of the brain, which is called the pineal region, are very difficult to access with medical instruments. These can block the channels of cerebrospinal fluid which surrounds and protects the brain.

The surgery took place at the Sarvodaya hospital in the northern Indian state of Haryana.

"When the case came to us, we examined the boy's condition and realized that the only way we perform the surgery on his head was to place him in a sitting position throughout the procedure," Kamal Verma, Head of Department, Neurosurgery and Spinal Surgery, who led the surgery, said, according to the Tribune.

"This was the only body posture that could have made it possible for us (doctors) to reach to the tumor inside the brain with our medical instruments. The operation was an extremely risky one and any complication during surgery would have been fatal. All the risks were explained to the boy's parents, and they agreed to go ahead to cure him of the tumor growing inside his head," he added.

The child remained in a sitting position, unconscious, for six hours due to general anesthesia.

"The complicated surgery was made possible with neuro-navigation, a computer-assisted technology which helped us navigate our way within the confines of the skull, and complete the entire procedure with precision in just six hours. The surgery was successful, and the boy was discharged after a few weeks from the hospital without any complications or problems," Gaurav Kesari, Consultant Neurosurgery, said, according to Medical Dialogues.

The exact date of the surgery was not known. It was also not known when the child was admitted to the hospital.