Russian patient with osteosarcoma got just her tumor removed without lower body amputation.
[Medical TOUR] Russian patient with osteosarcoma got just her tumor removed without lower body amputation.
Irina Kovalchuk in Vladivostok was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in her left thigh (femur) in 2003. The 48-year-old woman received five surgeries and radiation treatments leading up to the last year, but not all of the tumors could not be gone. As the last hope, she came to Korea in September 2011.
She was told that the entire lower body below the hip joint would need to be amputated from two other university hospitals. But that could not be what she wanted. She came to the SNUH and was diagnosed by Professor Han-su Kim in the Orthopedics Department. It seemed that her left hip joint and most of her femur part had been replaced with tumor prosthesis and artificial joints, the femoral artery and vein were already got removed and replaced with artificial vessels.
The recurred tumor was completely encompassing the prosthesis, which was inserted in the place of the femur. Due to its large size of 22 centimeters in length, almost all of the frontal muscles in her thigh need to be removed. Besides, the tumor completely covered the artificial vessels, which means they should be eliminated as well.
Professor Kim said that "The tumor was a rare type of osteosarcoma called parosteal. The malignancy of this cancer is relatively weaker than the common kinds. So as long as not spread to other parts, it surely can be treated with surgery. I assume that the patient’s cancer recurred five times because it had not been completely gone. Fortunately, the cancer did not metastasize to any part in her upper body. If the tumor in her thigh could be removed perfectly, there was still a possibility of a full recovery. The patient agreed on the lower body amputation as long as it was inevitable, but she eagerly hoped to the very last minute that would not happen. Professor Kim added “We did the surgery on January 12. To remove the tumor, a large portion of the muscles on the thigh was eliminated. The femoral artery and vein got rid of as well. The old vessels were connected to new sets of artificial vessels by Professor Seong-gi Min”.
Kovalchuk said “I am so happy to discharge from the hospital without going through any terrible surgery, because my condition was incurable in Russia, and I was even told that amputation was necessary in other Korean hospitals. But here, no horrible surgery was performed, and the tumor has been removed successfully. I was concerned about the communication because I’m a foreigner, but I didn’t experience any serious inconvenience with the help of the International Healthcare Center and was surprised how advanced Korean medicine is. She particularly stressed that she truly appreciate Professor Kim’s work over and over again.
She moves in her chair now, and is planned to start walking with a pair of crutches in a month.