Chennai
In one of the rarest surgeries carried out in government hospitals in the state, the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital (TNGMSSH) has corrected a multi-ligament injury in the left knee of 28-year-old Issac from the city. Issac had undergone a surgery at a private hospital, after he sustained injuries in 2010. However, the surgery had failed and the procedure had exhausted the options of an auto graft, in which the graft tissue from the same patient’s body is taken for surgery.
Speaking to DT Next, Dr G Leonard Ponraj, Professor and Head of Department, Department of Arthroscopy and Sports Injury, TNGMSSH, said, “In the earlier surgery, the graft from his right leg was used, but the surgery had subsequently failed. As a result, we didn’t have an auto graft option. Instead, we went for an allo graft, a graft tissue from a dead or live donor.”
Three grafts were required and two of them were sourced from the tissue bank from MS Ramaiah Medical College in Bengaluru. The third graft was sourced from the patient’s mother.Firstly. the live donor was anaesthetised and the hamstring tendons were harvested, then the dead donor’s Achilles tendon graft was fashioned into anterior cruciate ligament and posterior cruciate ligament. Then, the patient was anaesthetised and tunnels in the bone and joint were made and the grafts pulled through and fixed. “Therefore, this was a revision, combination, allograft, multi-ligament reconstruction of the left knee,” he said.
Dr Ponraj said the surgery also highlighted the importance of a tissue bank. “At the moment, we don’t have a tissue bank in both private and government hospitals. It can be set up a cost of Rs 10 lakh,” Dr Ponraj added. He said that the patient was on the waiting list for four to five months. “We see a number of cases either as result of sports injury or road traffic injury very often. A tissue bank can help such people,” he said.
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