Doctors at Odisha’s Shrirama Chandra Bhanja Medical College Hospital in Cuttack performed a first-of-its-kind surgery using extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine – a system that provides heart-lung bypass support.

They successfully removed a very large tumour measuring 12 x 9 x 14 mm from the windpipe of a 21-year-old patient using this technique giving him a new lease of life. The patient named Rinku Lohar who hails for Deogarh district was suffering from severe breathing problems for the last six months.

After he was admitted to the Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research located in Burla, and doctors found that he had endotracheal mass and for this he was advised to go to SCB MCH.

On April 5, Lohar was admitted to the cardiothoracic and vascular surgery department of SCH MCH. As the tumour which was choking 90 per cent of the windpipe could be not be removed by using general surgery, doctors decided to use the ECMO machine.

Sharing details about the procedure, Prof. Manoj Patnaik, head of CTVS department who led the team of doctors for surgery said the tumour was removed after a five-hour-long surgery. After monitoring his condition, the patient was found to be recovering well and was discharged after he was found fit. He added: “It was a first-of-its-kind surgery in Odisha where a tumour was removed from a patient’s trachea using ECMO support.”

Other doctors involved in the surgery were Dr Chitta Ranjan Thatei, Dr Subrat Kumar Nayak and Dr Debasish Padhi.