TUMOR ON BRAIN

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 99, 27 May 1938, Page 3

TUMOR ON BRAIN

OPERATION SUCCEEDS SURGEONS’ LONG TASK. EIGHT HOURS IN THEATRE. MELBOURNE, May 20. Working continuously for nearly eight hours recently, a team of Melbourne surgeons successfully removed a large tumor from the brain of a middle-aged woman. It was one of the longest and most hazardous operations performed in Alelbourne for some years. The patient, who was reported as progressing satisfactorily, had a tumor on the upper left hemisphere of her brain, It was in such a postion and of such a type that no surgeon in Australia would have tackled it ten years ago. The “ neuro-surgical team” at Alfred Hospital, where the woman was a patient, consisted of the surgeon, two assistant surgeons, two transfusionists, an anaesthetist and five nurses. The top of the head was opened and a flap of bone, as large as the palm of a hand, was turned back, exposing a tumor as big as a mediumsized potato. The task of removing it occupied the greater part of the time the patient was in the theatre. Bleeding was profuse, and three donors who had been kept in readiness supplied blood for transfusions hs it was lost from the patient. The operation went off without a hitch, and the woman was wheeled but of the theatre nearly eight hours after she had been brought in.