A 28-year-old pregnant woman paralyzed below the waist for several months due to a rare spine tumour has been successfully treated by a professor of neurosurgery at AIIMS with a measured amount of ‘absolute alcohol’ a neurotoxic drug, pumping into the tumour to destroy the lump. According to the surgeon, patient's MRI suggested that it was a spine tumour. She was brought to the neurosurgery department at AIIMS and it was immediately recognized as vertebral hemangioma which is a slow-growing vertebral tumour, and not malignant.
However, the biggest challenge in surgery was the high level of vascularization in the region, which if touched wrongly could lead to heavy bleeding in the pregnant woman and hence would endanger her life. Use of absolute alcohol to destroy the tumour, is the technique used for the first time in a patient who was in advanced stage of pregnancy. Due to the…
