On April 20, Quang Tri Provincial General Hospital confirmed that the unit had just successfully performed a complex surgery when simultaneously treating two primary cancer cells in two different organs on the same patient.
Previously, patient T.T (56 years old), residing in Bac Phuoc, Nam Cua Viet commune, Quang Tri province, was hospitalized due to prolonged abdominal pain. Through examination and screening, doctors discovered that the patient had sigmoid colon cancer.
During the systemic assessment, doctors continued to detect a lesion of about 2 cm in the left lung, initially suspected of metastasis. However, the biopsy results determined that this was also a glandular carcinoma. Immunohistochemistry tests later confirmed that the two tumors had independent origins.
The conclusion showed that the patient simultaneously had two separate primary cancers, including lung cancer at an early stage.
According to doctors, the difficulty of the case is distinguishing primary cancer from metastatic cancer, which is a factor that completely determines the treatment direction. If the diagnosis is wrong, the patient may lose the opportunity for radical surgery.
In addition, two diseases at two different stages raise the problem of choosing a treatment strategy: staged surgery or simultaneous intervention to take advantage of the "golden time", especially for early-stage lung cancer. This decision requires multi-specialized consultation and a comprehensive assessment of the patient's physical condition.
After consultation, the team chose the option of simultaneous laparoscopic surgery. The surgery lasted about 5 hours, including sigmoid colonectomy and left lung lobeectomy, performed directly by Dr. Truong Vinh Quy - Deputy Director of the Hospital and the team.
After surgery, the patient was monitored in the Intensive Care Unit. After 6 days, the condition improved significantly, the patient was awake, breathing on his own, eating and defecating normally, and drains had been removed.
The postoperative pathology results showed that in the lung was T1N0 stage adenocarcinoma, no lymph node metastasis was recorded; in the colon was T3N0 invasive tumor, no metastasis was detected.
According to doctors, this is a rare case when a patient simultaneously has two primary cancers in two different organs. Successfully performing radical laparoscopic surgery at the same time for both diseases is a major challenge, requiring high professional qualifications and close coordination between many specialties.
The success of the case not only helps patients avoid multiple surgeries, reduce costs and treatment time, but also affirms the ability to deploy high technology at Quang Tri Provincial General Hospital.
