Doctors at JJ perform Maharashtra’s first scarless thyroid surgery

MUMBAI: In a first for public hospitals, doctors of the state-government-run JJ Hospital in Byculla have performed a scarless surgery to remove a portion of a patient’s diseased thyroid gland. Instead of making a seven-centimetre cut along her neck, they used a centimetre-long cut to reach the butterfly-shaped gland via the armpit.

“In India, a couple of centres in the south have tried this new technique, but this is the first such case in Maharashtra,” said Prof Dr Ajay Bhandarwar, one of the doctors who operated on 36-year-old Kalyan resident Pradnya Hadgaonkar.

The JJ surgery department is planning a series of such operations now. An 18-year-old girl is to undergo the surgery in a few days, said doctors.

“Thyroid swellings are commonly seen more in women living in certain areas of Maharashtra such as Aurangabad, Jalgaon and Nandurbar. It is also seen among people in hilly areas because of certain nutritional deficiency,” said Dr Saurabh Gandhi, who with Dr Bhandarwar performed the minimally invasive surgery.

Doctors said it was better to remove nodules growing on the thyroid gland as they could, in certain cases, turn cancerous.

Hadgaonkar came to JJ in February with a large lump in the neck. “She had thyroid enlargement problem for two years but kept postponing the surgery because she didn’t want a scar running along her neck,” said Dr Gandhi. The surgery was done for free under Rajiv Gandhi Arogya Yojana.