Cancer treatment takes a leap forward

Dr. Shashikant Apte, consultant haemotologist, who performed Pranav’s surgery, revealed during the press conference held on Tuesday evening, “Such operations done abroad, cost the patient’s family about Rs. 25 lakh and more. Here, at our institute, it will cost between Rs 2.75 and six lakh, varying, as per individual case.” In India, the hospital at Vellore conducts 48 transplants per year and still has a very long waiting list of patients, across the country, upto 24 months, showing the necessity of such a facility, he stated. The MNCBI has the capacity presently to conduct one operation per week.

Now, thousands of children like Pranav, who had blood transfusions as their constant companion, can now take the magnanimous services of this cancer institute that has in many ways, made even the upto-now numero uno, Tata Memorial Research Centre in Mumbai, look a bit backward. And how!

Well, the MNCBI is the only cancer institute in the country to have the first comprehensive liver cancer unit. Dr. Anand Koppikar, leading oncologist and the key person of the institute said, “Liver cancer has been ignored in our country and it was considered as the end of the road, for the patient. No more. By a very sophisticated and painless method of surgery which is called cryosurgery, the treatment of liver cancer, whether primary or secondary, has become very easy.”

Dr. Koppikar elaborated, “Cryosurgery for liver tumours is an effective, bloodless technique and relatively free of complications. A hollow probe introduced into the core of the tumour is connected to liquid nitrogen source at minus 190 degrees. The ice ball, thus formed, destroys the tumour, sparing the rest of the normal liver.”

Another ace up this institute’s sleeve, which is exceptionally well maintained, is its thyroid cancer unit. This cancer, which is termed as completely curable, has been taken up as a challenge by the experts here. Dr. Sameer Sonar, nuclear medicine consultant, provided the amazing process of treatment of such a cancer. He stated, “In thyroid cancer, the metastatic deposits behave like normal thyroid tissue and produce a hormone using iodine from diet. These metastases thus retain iodine absorbed from food and water taken by the patient. Radioactive iodine, when administered to patients suffering from metastatic thyroid cancer concentrates specifically in these secondary deposits. The beta radiation from this iodine kills off the cancerous cells.”

In Maharashtra, Tata Memorial is the only other cancer institute where the facility for thyroid cancer treatment is available.

The institute also boasts of an intra-arterial chemotheraphy and radioactive therapy unit wherein the patient need not get admitted to the hospital, but can walk out within a few hours of this painless, administration of the dose.

The institute has been taking patients for all these new cancer units, since the month of May and is now totally geared up, to go full swing, stated Dr S. Menghani, director, Inlaks and Budhrani Hospital. He revealed, “In the last eight years or so, we have spent Rs 27 crore towards the building up of the cancer unit which has world class facilities, thus bringing relief to thousands of patients afflicted with this disease.”

Dr. Koppikar stressed that cancer treatment in the institute, was not confined only to the treatment. It was multi-nodal, which comprehensively comprised imaging, surgery radio-therapy, chemotherapy, nuclear medicine and support groups. Such a multi-dimensional approach, goes a long way in the physical as well as the psychological healing of a patient, he pointed out.

The Inlaks and Budhrani Hospital, which has developed the cancer institute now ambitiously plans to build an international class heart institute and eye institute.