6-Year-Old Girl's Tumor Removed By Robot Technology First Time In Australia

For the first time in Australia, a Melbourne surgeon used robot technology to remove an inoperable tumor from a six-year-old girl's head, reports said Tuesday.

The successful operation was recently performed on Freyja Christiansen from Canberra at the Epworth Hospital in Richmond. The six-year-old was diagnosed with a rare sarcoma near the base of her skull in December 2016, along with other tumors in her head and neck.

Due to the location of the child’s tumor — between a main artery and the base of her skull — several specialists refused to operate on her. Due to this, she underwent immunotherapy since last year, which helped shrink the tumors. However, her family wanted a long-term solution and began searching for someone willing to operate on her.

Head and neck surgeon Dr. Ben Dixon from Boston’s Children’s Hospital agreed to perform the life-saving surgery, with the help of a robot that entered through Freyja's mouth to remove the rare parapharyngeal clear-cell sarcoma.

"Freyja had a tumor between her throat and her carotid artery up behind the palate in a very tricky spot, as well as a number of other tumors around the head and neck region, but it was this particular tumor that people were quite concerned about operating on," Dr. Dixon said. "This is the first time robotic surgery has been done on a child in Australia. It has been done elsewhere in other countries but only a couple of times for malignant tumors and none in this position."

The doctor said the six-year-old has had two operations in the past 15 days to remove all the tumors and is recovering well.

"She wasn't too happy with her feeding tube the first day so we took that out the next day, and she has been eating and drinking sufficiently since the first day after surgery so she hasn't needed any tubes [for] feeding," Dr. Dixon said. "We were initially very concerned about the possibility of swelling around her airway and around her voice box after surgery in the throat, but that didn't eventuate to any problem."

Freyja is said to be one of the youngest recorded patients of the rare form of cancer, and after battling it successfully, the young girl is heading home Wednesday.

She will continue the immunotherapy treatment in Melbourne, but her mother said she is optimistic and her surgeons are confident the child will continue to improve.

Freyja said Tuesday she was feeling better and happy the doctors in Melbourne could help her. She added she was looking forward to returning home.

"I'm going to start swimming again … and maybe also start riding horses," Freyja told reporters.

Her mother Liz Christiansen said it was a miracle the tumors appeared to have been cured within six weeks of having the first consultation.

"We went all over the world really — looking, asking, begging, trying to do what we could to find a solution — because we were told [it was] inoperable, incurable," Christiansen said. "So when you hear those words what do you do? You don't give up."