Bangla man with swollen chest beats rare cancer in Bengaluru hospital

A complex surgery at a hospital here has helped a 50-year-old Bangladeshi man beat rare cancer.

The patient had swelling in front of the chest for six years but never faced breathlessness or palpitation. While he initially addressed it with local treatment, he had to roam the world over for a permanent cure. He eventually arrived at Manipal Hospitals here where a diagnosis showed it was a malignant tumour.

Dr Somashekhar S P, Chairperson and HoD of Oncology at the hospital, discussed possible solutions with Dr Ashok B C and his team of plastic surgeons. “Even if we had addressed cancer through surgery, there was no feasible solution to fix the chest bone and ribs impacted by the tumour. Without these bones, the patient would have spent the rest of the life on a mechanical ventilator,” Dr Somashekhar said.

The doctors eventually removed the tumour surgically by assessing its position through an MRI scan. “Under general anaesthesia, the entire chest bone (sternum) and the ribs were removed without much loss of blood. We reconstructed the parts with an advanced 3D printed custom-made titanium implant which was fixed using a new drilling technique and titanium wire. We had custom-made the parts based on the CT scan images of the rib cage and chest bone,” Dr Somashekar said.

Recreating the bones with lightweight implants was not easy, though. While such an implant would weigh 5 kg, technologists used a modified honeycomb technology to bring down the weight to just 250 gm, a technician said.

These implants are well accepted by the body and less prone to immune reaction and implant rejection, thereby reducing the risk of osteoporosis or fractures. The implant was covered with muscle flaps taken from the front of the chest before closing the skin, doctors said.

Three days after the surgery, the patient was wheeled out of the ICU and put on chest physiotherapy and gradually initiated into mobility for a few days. At the time of discharge, he walked out just like any other normal human being, doctors said.

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