The patient is Mrs. L.B.T (62 years old, Can Tho City). Recently, in a motorbike accident, the patient hit her forehead, then went to a hospital near her home to have a CT scan of her brain. The result of the traffic accident was only a soft tissue injury, however, the doctors discovered that the patient had a brain tumor.
In mid-November, the patient went to S.I.S Can Tho International General Hospital for a check-up. Through the MRI results, the doctors confirmed that the patient had a fairly large tumor measuring 35x40mm, fortunately this was a tumor with the potential to be benign.
After consulting with many specialists, the doctors decided to use preoperative tumor embolization to reduce the risk of bleeding during surgery.
Specialist Doctor Nguyen Quang Hung - Neurosurgery Unit, General Surgery Department, S.I.S Can Tho International General Hospital - said that pre-operative embolization helps block blood flow to the tumor, thereby reducing blood loss during surgery, ensuring the surgery is safer and more convenient.
"However, the biggest difficulty in this case is that the tumor is quite large, located in the middle of the top of the head, right in the sensory motor area, the risk of bleeding is very high and can be dangerous during surgery, or leave sequelae of paralysis after surgery..." - Dr. Hung explained.
According to Dr. Hung, the sooner the tumor is surgically removed, the more beneficial it will be for the patient, because over time, the tumor will grow more, and surgery will become more difficult.
The surgery lasted nearly 4 hours, and the doctors successfully removed the entire tumor from healthy tissue. After surgery, the patient recovered quickly, without weakness, with negligible blood loss, no need for a blood transfusion, and was discharged after nearly 1 week of treatment.
Currently, most brain tumor surgeries require open surgery. At S.I.S Can Tho International General Hospital, the Navigation system helps doctors accurately determine the location of the tumor, thereby helping to narrow the surgical path and limit the scope of intervention compared to manual calculations.
Dr. Hung recommends that if a patient has a headache due to an abnormal brain condition such as a brain tumor or a brain vascular malformation, early intervention is needed to prevent the risk. Even if there are no obvious symptoms, regular health check-ups are still important to help detect potential problems.
