World’s youngest large brain tumour patient operated on in Chandigarh

Chandigarh, Jan 21 : Doctors at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) here have created history by operating on the world’s youngest large brain tumour patient that was removed through the nose, it was announced on Thursday.
The youngest child reported till date to have undergone endoscopic surgery through the nose for removal of such a tumour was two years old, operated on in 2019 in Stanford in the US, said a hospital press release..
A team of endoscopic skull base surgeons, Dhandapani S.S. and Sushant, both of the Department of Neurosurgery, and Rijuneeta from the Department of ENT, operated upon the one year and four months old girl hailing from Uttarakhand.
She was referred to the PGIMER with loss of vision.
As per the doctors, the child was normal and playful following visual stimuli a few months back. For the last 20 days, the mother noticed that the child was not following anything shown to her. The child’s MRI revealed a calcified brain tumour at the base of the skull suggestive of craniopharyngioma of size three cm, large for a child of one year, close to critical neural structures such as optic nerves and hypothalamus.
The tumours are usually operated on through open surgery, and the remaining part is treated with radiation therapy. Over the last few years, such tumours are being removed through the nose endoscopically by neurosurgeons teaming with ENT surgeons among patients older than six years.