Pune (Voice News Service): A team of Doctors at Sancheti Hospital conducted Spine Stenting Procedure / Vertebral body stenting” (VBS) for the first time in western India and under the supervision of spinal navigation tool ‘O-arm’ for the first time in India . A team of doctors led by Dr. Shailesh Hadgaonkar, Chief Of Spine & Neuroscience unit at Sancheti Hospital conducted two such procedures recently one on a 51 year old female and another on a 82 year old female.
Explaining the case Dr. Shailesh Hadgaonkar said that the patients had a spinal fracture and an Xray and MRI clearly showed broken spin. This was the cause of unbearable pain in the patients and was hardly able to stand or sit or carry on with any movement. The 82 year old female also is a heart patient and had an angioplasty before. We tried to relieve her of pain with medications and injections due to her age , but the pain kept worsening. We then decided to conduct “Vertebral body Stenting” (VBS) or spine stenting procedure.
VBS is a minimally invasive reconstructive treatment for Vertebral Body fractures. In this procedure a balloon is placed in the spine to expand it followed by stent and sealed with cement. In this case local anesthesia was given and the procedure was consucted under the supervision of high tech navigation tool O-Arm which enables exact location, placement of cement and makes scan possible in real time with low dose.
Dr. Hadgaonkar said that the patients were relieved of pain and went home in couple of days. Generally the other options include cement injections( vertebroplasty), fixing with screws but in this case the collapse was more and injecting cement would have been difficult. Also the age of the patient was a factor and could not have undergone surgery.
Dr. Parag Sancheti, said that modern procedures and tools like O-arm are a boon to patients as they are minimally invasive and ensure faster recovery with better results. In this case there were many risk factors due to age and health complications of the patients. But I would like to congratulate our team for demonstrating skills and precision .
