Neurosurgeon Dr Amarnauth Dukhi continues to perform groundbreaking procedures in Guyana in an effort to enhance the surgical landscape.
This time round, he broke new surgical ground by performing the country’s first pediatric brain aneurysm surgery on Monday at the Woodlands Hospital.
The patient is 13-year-old St Roses High student Ty David who was admitted to the Hospital after he lost consciousness following a severe headache.
A CT scan showed extensive bleeding in his brain which would have been from a spontaneous rupture. That caused paediatrician Dr Hardat Persaud to contact neurosurgeon Dr Dukhi for a consultation.
“Brain aneurysms is something that are more frequent in adults, as matter of fact for 100,000 kids below 15-year-old 0.05 to 0.09 is the frequency rate, so if you have 100,000 kids less than 15-year-old, less than one kid will have a brain aneurysm, that’s how rare it was and it is. Now any brain aneurysm that is ruptured is considered in neurosurgery to be an extremely, extremely critical with immediate danger to that patient’s life,” Dr Dukhi explained during a press conference today.
In David’s case, the aneurysm was on the right internal carotid artery as it bifurcates and forms the anterior cerebral artery and the middle cerebral artery.
Dr Dukhi explained that it was a huge aneurysm with a long neck.
He added that through collaboration with Neurospine Services Inc, Guyana began offering aneurysm surgeries just under two years ago. The surgery was minimally invasive meaning that Dr Dukhi did not have to open David’s head.
“It was also my first attempt to do a paediatric brain aneurysm. The previous six that we would have done were adults, those were okay. This child had successful surgery last night…The procedure went extremely well,” Dr Dukhi expressed.
Prior to the introduction of neurosurgery services in Guyana by the young Dr Dukhi, patients had to travel overseas for such services.
Dr Dukhi explained that David would have had to pay over US$200,000 if he was required to do the procedure overseas. Locally, Dr Dukhi and team were able to successfully perform the procedure for 10-15 per cent of that cost.
