The technique that was performed involved both the upper right quadrant of the abdomen and the pelvis. To intervene in this type of case, there are no registered clinical guidelines or procedures that support successful clinical cases.
Ana María is a 22-year-old woman who was diagnosed with immature teratoma in the right ovary, a type of tumor that is usually made up of several layers of tissue, sometimes hair, skin, and muscle, which due to its location can compromise other tissues. organs, such as the liver, kidneys, or veins.
The woman underwent several chemotherapy sessions at other institutions, where she failed to obtain positive responses and her tumor was found to increase in size and weight; which generated a mass of more than 7 kilos that did not allow her to have a good quality of life and generated pain that was impossible to bear, with a prognosis of only 15 days to live, before being operated on in the hospital. Medical Center.
The intervention was carried out using the technique used for giant retroperitoneal tumors such as the one presented by Ana María, an intervention that was successfully achieved and that after three weeks of recovery removed all possibilities of risk.
Initially, it was about extracting the tumor by separating it from the nearby organs that were affected. Currently, the spaces between the organs are not intervened, but all the alteration of inflamed tissue is removed to avoid leaving sequelae of the tumor inside the organism, affirmed the Doctor Juan Manuel Rico, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Surgeon of Medical Center.
This intervention is considered a large-scale surgery and highly recognized by the health sector of the region and the country, taking into account that the percentage of risk is high and could present different complications such as heavy bleeding, intestinal perforations, vascular lesions. with profuse bleeding, injury to the ureters, among other complications, to which the group of specialists at the Medical Centerdecided to take the risk and provide a life expectancy.
Over time, after undergoing surgery and radioactive procedures, Ana María was declared a palliative patient, a state where life expectancy is reduced and in which she must undergo medical treatments to control pain.
The first contact was with Dr. JJuan Manuel Rico, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Surgeon from the Medical Centerwho in the company of a multidisciplinary team assumed the great challenge of extracting the tumor in a procedure that lasted more than 6 hours and that brought together a group of 27 health professionals, including a liver and liver transplant surgeon, transplant surgeon abdominals, gynecologist oncologist, internal physicians, urologist, liver transplant anesthesiologist, liver transplant hepatologist, intensivist, radiologist, psychiatrist, nursing managers, among other specialists who provided this opportunity for hope.
“Ana María inspired us to continue believing, seeing her so clinging to life and seeing her desire to get ahead, and being a young woman who had already undergone an intervention, and well; By having infrastructures such as those of the Medical Centerwe decided to take the risk and gather a group of specialists with a lot of experience, willing to save a life”, shares the Dr. Juan Manuel Ricospecialist of the Institution.
Ana María today has new dreams, thanks to the human commitment of the specialists from the Group of Surgeons of the Hepatobiliary Unit of the Medical Center; Upon completion of the intervention and reaching stability in the patient’s health, the multidisciplinary team determines that the long-term prognosis is uncertain, since there is a lack of scientific evidence on this type of tumor.
For now, chemotherapy will not be given since on previous occasions, increases in the size of the operated tumors were evident; Therefore, controls were scheduled every 3 or 4 months with examinations such as tomography or MRI every 6 months.
An institution with world-class procedures
The Medical Center has the technological capacity to support this type of intervention, using it in highly complex transplants such as liver. The intraoperative monitoring is of the highest quality at the level of the best health centers in the world, on this occasion a team was used that recovers the blood that is being lost, reinjecting it through a specific vein, thus avoiding the use of blood transfusions. The surgical area has all the necessary technological supplies to safely dissect the liver and other organs. However, the most important thing has been the preparation and disposition of the human capital that is part of the Medical Center, a multidisciplinary team focused and dedicated to the case of each patient, combining knowledge to offer the best alternative, that is, working as a team with the flag of the institution, concludes the Dr. Juan Manuel Rico, Hepatobiliary and Liver Transplant Surgeon.
The safety of the procedure covers several aspects; have access to technological advances in surgical supplies; laboratory processes, blood bank, monitoring in the operating room and intensive care; but what is most relevant is the prudence of the medical team that allows joint discussions to guide the case, listening to opinions and reducing possible adverse events that may occur.
Less than 100 registered cases of this procedure have been performed in the world, and today Valle del Cauca becomes a department of Colombia where new life opportunities are offered to patients with procedures performed under the highest quality standards in the world; with a group of specialists willing to give everything, and with even more reasons when hope is gone.