Rare feat: Surgery minus transfusion
3 Mar 2008,
NEW DELHI: Football was Usanga Anikien's bread and butter. But the 35-year-old Kenyan footballer's dream was abruptly cut short when he was diagnosed with sequale of spinal TB -a crippling disease, resulting from tuberculosis of the chest.
Confined to the wheelchair for the past three years, Usanga's only hope was a highly complicated cervicodorsal decompression surgery, which he decided to undergo in India.
However, Usanga had just one condition -doctors could not transfuse a single drop of blood, even if need be, during or after the surgery.
The reason -Usanga is a member of an international religious denomination, called Jehovah's Witnesses, that regards blood as sacred and rejects allogeneic and pre-operative autologous transfusions of any type.
The result: a six-hour-long breakthrough surgery conducted under a microscope by a team of doctors from Sir Gangaram that now has Usanga back into doing what he does best, play football. The team, that included Dr Rana Patir and Dr Manish Vaish from the neurosurgery department, also ensured the surgery entailed minimal blood loss.
While generally such a surgery could see loss of about 350 ml of blood on the operating table, Usanga lost just 25 ml of blood.
Also, while such a surgery generally lasts a little over an hour, doctors spent over six hours on Usanga.
Said Dr Vaish, "It was challenging. We had to ensure minimal blood loss as Usanga's consent paper said whatever happens, no blood will be transfused. Usually, we always keep 3-4 units of blood in hand. We went very slow with the surgery to prevent blood loss. We also administered haematinics substances, such as iron and folic acid, which increases haemoglobin and red cell production."
The surgery was conducted under a microscope so that the surgeons had complete control over the micro-capillary vessels.
The doctors were specially careful about not poking into the aorta - the largest artery in the body originating from the left ventricle of the heart and bringing oxygenated blood to all parts of the body in the systemic circulation, which lies just under the spinal column.
Following the surgery, Usanga was administered hylase injections which dissolved the fibrous adhesion engulfing his spinal cord and nerves.
"In just seven days, Usanga was back on his feet. It also cost him just Rs 2.5 lakh. He came to India after consulting doctors from the US where he was told the surgery would cost $50,000," Dr Vaish said.
He said special planning was done to counter any untoward incident that could lead to excessive bleeding.
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