84-yr-old undergoes rare surgery

A nasty fall during an evening walk left Kalyan resident, Godavari Vegad (84), with a fractured hip bone.

A nasty fall during an evening walk left Kalyan resident, Godavari Vegad (84), with a fractured hip bone.

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The complex surgery to fix the broken bone was further complicated by facts such as Vegad’s advanced age, severe obesity and brittle bones.

To make matters worse, she also suffered from deep vein thrombosis, a disorder in which blood forms clots in the vein, in the left leg, which had to be operated on.

The blood disorder posed a risk because if the clot got dissolved during the surgery, it could result in the flow of impure blood.

However, a rare technique of using an Inferior Vena Cava (IVC) filter implant to trap this impure blood in case of clot dissolving enabled the doctors to perform the surgery.

“It was one of those rare cases where before fixing a bone we had to consult a cardiologist as it involved blood clotting,” said Dr Milind Sawant, consultant orthopedic surgeon, Fortis Hospitals in Mulund.

After the insertion of the IVC filter, the patient was taken for the orthopedic surgery.

“We used a minimal invasive technique to fix the fracture without opening the fracture site,” said Sawant.

“This resulted in minimal blood loss and therefore blood transfusion was not required. It also resulted in minimal tissue trauma leading to less pain and faster recovery,” he added.

The doctor used a titanium implant to fix the fracture.

“This device is light but extremely strong to take the weight of an obese patient,” Sawant added.