Chennai: Lifeline Institute of Minimal Access (LIMA), a unit of Lifeline Group of Hospitals has performed a surgical procedure and successfully treated a very rare disease called stomach “ZYGOMYCOSIS” of a 35-year-old patient in Chennai.

Commenting on the surgery, Dr. J S Rajkumar, Chairman & Chief Surgeon of LIMA said, “We initially suspected advanced stage of cancer and we had to rule out the malignancy after conducting a series of biopsy tests, with expert pathologist opinion. The medical team found a rare and aggressive type of fungus in the stomach, an infectious disease which carries a very high mortality; required an urgent surgical intervention with high end anti-fungal drugs to remove all the infected tissues under cover of the anti-fungal medications”.

After the surgery, Dr. Rajkumar explained the salient features of the operation and the rare stomach disease. He said that the patient, Mr. Kalimuthan (name changed) came to the hospital with a series of complaints including abdominal pain, weight loss and occasional bleeding while passing stools, etc.  Prior to the surgery, the endoscopy report showed features of a dark coloured lesion. Further imaging with a CT and PET scan revealed that with a high suspicion of stomach cancer spread to surrounding nodes and a few distant nodes as well, two more biopsies were undertaken which were again inconclusive, but possibly a disease called “Eosinophilic Gastritis”.

Then, the LIMA medical team decided to treat the patient with the appropriate empirical medicines for this rare diagnosis which involved a regimen of steroids. Unfortunately, the patient did not show much improvement even after two-weeks of steroid therapy. This was confirmed by repeating the endoscopy test. And the final report along with the expert pathologist opinion revealed the presence of a rare and aggressive type of fungus growth in the stomach.

“Finally, we proceeded to perform an immediate total gastrectomy procedure where the complete stomach and surrounding nodes were completely removed and joined the small intestine to the food-pipe. This unique surgical procedure was done through a minimally invasive laparoscopic approach. The patient has since then recovered very quickly”, Dr. Rajkumar added.

The case report has been sent to an international medical Journal. This is the second case of stomach fungus operation and removal to be reported from India and the first survivor. This is also the first time, worldwide, that this was done through a key-hole surgery.

A beaming patient, Kalimuthan is a father of a two-year-old son and works as an Office Assistant in Chennai. He and his family members thanked profusely the LIMA team of doctors headed by Dr. Rajkumar for not only diagnosing the disease but also providing comprehensive surgical intervention at the right time and saved his life.

The rare 5- hour operation was performed at the Kilpauk LIMA Hospital with a team of 6 surgeons and an anesthetist.