Teenaged girl undergoes rare spine disorder surgery

Gurgaon, July 15 (IANS) A 16-year old girl has successfully undergone a complex surgery for a spinal cord disorder at a hospital here, a doctor said Tuesday.

Shefali, a native of Amritsar in Punjab, was diagnosed with Kyphoscoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine in both acoronal and sagittal plane.

The congenital deformity made Shefali's backbone split into two halves and left her with an ill-formed curvature, besides causing pain in her limbs and making her susceptible to injuries.

She was operated upon twice at the Paras Hospital here June 30.

The procedure was carried out in two phases - first, the correction of the internal spine formation and second the correction of the curvature.

"If the disorder was left untreated, there was a probability that due to the curvature becoming more pronounced, she would also have looked grotesquely malformed which can lead to imbalance and can have severe psychological consequences on the affected person," said Arun Bhanot, chief spine surgeon at the hospital who conducted the surgery.

"This being a complex case, we could not embark on immediate spine alignment correction. Rather, we first had to deal with the malformed spinal cord to minimize the risk," he added.

Bhanot said the girl started walking within a couple of days of the surgery.