The Neurosurgery team at Tawam Hospital in Al-Ain managed to eradicate a large, large-scale "retro-Clival Chordoma" tumor in the bottom of the skull through the nasal cavity of a 24-year-old patient during a successful miniature surgery that lasted about 12 hours using advanced new endoscopic surgical techniques.
The patient recovered without any complications after a long suffering with pain as a result of the severe pressure that the tumor was causing on the brain stem, which also affected his ability to see.
Neurosurgery consultant and team leader, Dr. Mohamed Al-Asha, explained that the excised tumor is one of the very rare brain tumors with an average infection rate of one per million annually, and this rare tumor grows gradually behind the bottom of the skull bone in the area that separates the throat and the brain stem that is subjected to increased pressure With an increase in the size of the tumor, which in turn causes some symptoms, such as duplication of eyesight, weakness in the movement of the face, swallowing, tongue, and a change in the tone of the voice, in addition to a disturbance in the movement of the limbs and in the sensation, and endanger the patient's life in general.
Al-Asha emphasized that the surgical intervention to eradicate this rare tumor is considered one of the most complicated operations due to the seriousness of its location and its attachment to the brain stem and brain nerves that control eye movement, facial movement, swallowing and speech in addition to the very sensitive functions of the brain stem such as breathing and pacemaker.
For his part, the member of the surgical team, Dr. Mahmoud Bennour, considered the first operation of its kind that was successfully completed to completely remove the tumor through the nose without complications in the UAE as a result of advanced diagnostic and therapeutic ingredients that Tawam Hospital possesses and its keenness to attract international medical cadres and competencies in various Specializations pointing out that this type of laparoscopic surgery was limited until recently to a limited number of specialized centers in the world, due to the lack of available surgical expertise and the necessary surgical and medical techniques.
He pointed out that the surgical intervention to treat such rare cases was done by opening the skull and sometimes it was necessary to perform more than one operation from different sides of the head and the surgical complications were very dangerous, but with the development of laparoscopic surgical techniques it became possible to completely eradicate such tumors by Nose without resorting to a brain incision.