Vadodara’s SSG hospital conducts surgery to treat Moyamoya disease for the first time

On Saturday, in a media interaction, Medical Superintendent Dr Rajan Aiyer and doctors of the department of neurosurgery at the hospital talked about the successful recovery of the two children, who were operated on on February 17 and 23, respectively.

The surgical process to treat Moyamoya disease, which involves restoring the blood flow to the brain by diverting a blood vessel from the scalp or a nearby muscle, is a complicated procedure that lasts over five hours, doctors said.

Dr Parth Modi, Endovascular neurosurgeon at SSG hospital said, “The surgery involves transplanting blood vessels to the brain… It is a delicate surgery and time-consuming. We undertook the process of indirect vascularisation, which involved transferring vessels from the surface of the scalp to the surface of the brain. Each surgery took five hours,”

“Moyamoya is a chronic progressive disease which affects the internal carotid artery as well as the middle and anterior cerebral arteries and can lead to paralysis in the long term. The earlier the detection and treatment, the better it is,” he added.

The doctors at the hospital said that although the two children recuperated from the surgeries in two days, the healing process requires about six months. Dr Aiyer credited the anesthesia department and other staff of SSG hospital for the support during the surgery.

Dr Aiyer said, “All departments of SSG hospital work as a team. This includes the operating surgeon, anesthesia department, nursing professionals as well as the Class IV officers… A long, complicated surgical process cannot be completed without the anesthesia department.”

The father of the five-year-old boy said that the family had been able to treat their son at SSG hospital without worrying about the costs.”In private hospitals, the treatment would have cost us Rs 5 to 6 lakhs. We could not have afforded the treatment. But we were able to treat our son at SSG hospital with a team of experts, who successfully operated upon our son and have given him a new lease of life.”
According to Dr Modi, although the condition is rare, there are no available statistics related to MMD in India.

“As per Japanese medical journals, the incidence of MMD in Japan is about three to five per one lakh of the population… In India, there are no statistics available and therefore, we do not know how many cases of MMD are diagnosed and treated; the need is to spread awareness, especially in diagnosing those children, who have been suffering from multiple episodes of strokes and seizures,” he said.