Ankylosing Spondylitis caused the problem

* Complex surgery was done at KIMS Kondapur

* Patient completely recovered after surgery

An 80-year-old patient was suffering from a stiff neck and spine for the last 5 years. He is well-known in the society. But, he was unable to walk erect and bend for the last 3 years. He is so deformed that he was not able to sleep erect for the last 3 years and can not see forward objects due to severe neck, and spine deformity. The patient visited many institutes, but there was no relief. Finally, he visited KIMS Kondapur in December 2022 and met Dr. Krishna Chaitanya, Consultant Spine Surgeon.

After examination and performing a series of examinations, the doctor advised him of a risky, but concrete solution to his problem. He has advised a major surgery called Pedicle Subtraction Osteotomy, which is a highly advanced procedure that included huge risk to the patient. But due to the advanced technology like navigation and expert surgeons with a dedicated spine team, he counselled the patient for surgery.

The procedure involves a fracture of the spine and the removal of a wedge-shaped bone from one part of the spine to correct the deformity. The angles should be very precisely calculated, as any miscalculation would result in extremely debilitating to the patient. After looking at all the images and calculating various angles, the doctor decided to remove a 30-degree wedge from the L3 vertebrae in the spine, which would result in getting back the spine to near-normal curvature and his forward gaze also back.

Initially, 3d printing of the patient’s spine was done and deformity angles were calculated. Surgery was performed in December by using computer navigation and a special operating table which would enable correcting the deformity. The entire procedure was done under Intra Operative Neural Monitoring. It took 8 long hours for the procedure with 1500 ml of blood loss. The expert anaesthesia team was meticulous in maintaining the patient throughout the procedure.

The patent did extremely well after the procedure and got back his near-normal curvature of the spine. He felt so happy that this correction gave him another life.