Guwahati Doctor Successfully Completes Rare Robotic Surgery on a 13-Year-Old

Dr. Subhash Khanna, a laparoscopic, bariatric and robotic surgeon successfully removed a splenic cyst of a 13-year-old boy through robotic surgery on Thursday, managing to preserve the spleen in the process. Such large splenic cyst is quite rare in children.

The patient named Rihan complained of vague abdominal pain associated with occasional vomiting for the past 3 months. He initially consulted doctors at a reputed private Hospital in Guwahati where a provisional diagnosis of splenic lymphangioma or hydatid cyst was made in May and he was treated with medication.

However as there was no significant improvement, the boy’s parents approached Dr. Subhash Khanna of the surgical Department of Swagat Super Speciality Surgical Institute located at Maligaon in Guwahati.

Rihan was re-evaluated and diagnosed to have cholelithiasis with splenomegaly with large splenic hilar cyst which was clinically palpable. All his blood reports were normal with the exception of serum bilirubin which was just borderline elevated.

The parents and the child were counselled by the team of doctors as spleen is a very important immune organ which filters the blood, fights the germ infecting the blood and removes old or damaged red blood cells.

“As spleen is a highly vascular organ, so chances of bleeding were very high more so, as the cyst was located in the hilar region” said Dr. Subhash Khanna.

There are many advantages of Robotic over open surgery such as minimal scars, speedy recovery, reduced pain, shorter duration of hospital stay, lesser post surgery complications. But the greatest advantage of Robotic surgery is its precision using which Dr. S. Khanna and his team consisting of Dr. S. Choudhury, Dr. Biswajyoti Rabha and anesthesiologist, Dr. Kanineeka Das and assisted by Robotic scrub nurse Vidya, Alvanisha and Lipika successfully carried out deroofing and excision of the large splenic cyst with aspiration of all his contents along with removal of Gallbladder Robotically.

Of late, splenic surgery has become conservative as all endeavours are towards preservation of as much of the spleen as possible. At Swagat Hospital, many such splenic tear cases have been treated with arterial embolization in the recent past. However, this is the first instance in entire Northeast where such a large splenic cyst has been treated robotically preserving the spleen at the same time in a child.

Incidentally this is the first such splenic giant cyst in a boy of 13 years removed robotically with the new robot “Versius”.

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