A 24-year-old native of Uzbekistan who was suffering from multiple point recurrent cancer of the leg bone (femur) recently underwent a rare bone replacement surgery at a private hospital in the city.
Sobidjan Juraev had tumour bone malignancy at multiple points on the bone between the knee and hip.
"He first underwent a total hip replacement in June 2011, which failed. It followed up by two more surgeries in his home country, which temporarily kept the cancer at bay but failed to have the desired result," said Dr Rajeev K Sharma, senior consultant, Orthopedics and Joint Replacement surgeon at Indraprastha Apollo.
The resurrection of the cancer despite several rounds of treatment also posed serious threat of a leg amputation or worse a disarticulation of the hip. After struggling with the ailment for four years, the family decided to travel to India to seek better medical treatment and cure for the debilitating disease.
In a surgery that lasted eight hours, the entire cancer-affected bone right from the hip to the knee was removed and replaced with an artificial implant.
"We examined the patient thoroughly and discovered that the cancer in the right femur bone had revived. Now, it was at three points in the right femur bone between the hip and the knee, necessitating a major bone removal and reconstruction procedure to prevent the tumor from resurrecting again.
"A continuation of the tumour could have resulted in an eventual amputation which would have been a life-long disability for a young man," said Sharma.
"Total Femoral Replacement in this case was a very difficult and rare surgery as it was a kind of a combination of hip replacement and knee replacement. To be able to get rid of the cancer completely, we needed to remove the entire stretch of thigh bone from the right hip to the right knee and reconstruct the same artificially.
"It was a challenging surgery as it involved the removal and reconstruction of a large chunk of bone at the same time." he said.
