Doctors of the Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences and Teaching Hospital successfully corrected a deformity in a fire accident patient.
A team of orthopaedic surgeons led by Satish Nesari, associate professor, operated upon the patient using Ilizarov technique to cure the girl’s deformed feet and enabled her to use it after years of disuse.
The girl had suffered severe burns in childhood. It caused contracture of the right ankle with grotesque deformity, making her unable to walk. The fire had completely twisted the ankle and it had remained an unused appendage.
Her poor parents did not choose corrective surgery as they could not afford treatment. She suffered from social stigma and her friends and relatives teased her due to her deformity. Due to this deformity, she had remained unmarried. Efforts by her parents to get her treated were unsuccessful. Some surgeons advised her to opt for amputation below the knee. But the parents did not opt for it.
Her parents approached BIMS Hospital after several years of the injury. Doctors in the Orthopaedia Department advised her to undergo corrective surgery using Ilizarov technique.
And, the corrective surgery using Ilizarov treatment cured the patient.
“The deformity is completely corrected now. She is able to walk almost normally,” Dr. Nesari said.
“Ilizarov method needs to be promoted as it is cost effective. Patients can choose to avoid plastic surgery if they choose Ilizarov technique. It also helps in taking up structural changes in the underlying bone through neo-histeo genesis,” the surgeon said.
Chief Administrative Officer Siddu Hulloli, who visited the patient in Belagavi on Tuesday, said that he was overcome with emotion to see the joy on the face of the patient and her relatives. They told me that it seemed as if the doctors worked magic on the victim.
Developed by Gavriil Ilizarov from Soviet Russia in the 1950s, the technique involves using an external fixator apparatus to correct deformities of hands or legs. It can lengthen or reshape damaged bones. It is used as a limb-sparing technique for treating complex fractures and open bone fractures and to help in the union of bones. It can correct angular muscularity and other problems, Dr. Nesari said.
Dr. Nesari is a faculty of the Association of Surgeons for the methodology and Application of Ilizarov’s in India (ASAMI). ASAMI has granted BIMS a fully-funded six week fellowship programme for four orthopaedic surgeons under his mentorship. Such fellowships will help increase the number of surgeons trained in Ilizarov’s technique, he said.
