Recent medical advancements and availability of technical expertise and equipment have allowed the doctors at a government hospital to perform an intensely complicated surgery in just four and a half hours, thus saving a 50-year-old coconut climber from the brink of death. The surgery to remove the tumor lump called 'neuroendocrine' was conducted for the first time in the 163-year-old history of Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) on August 14. The tumor was present in one of the two carotid arteries, which supply oxygenated blood to the brain.
The tricky operation had to be performed by blocking one of the arteries which, if failed, could have left the patient paralyzed. S Murugan, a coconut tree climber from Pudupatti in Dindigul, recently began to get painful sensation on the neck, but never thought it would be cancer. When he casually went to a hospital in Batlagundu to get it…
