A person with bone cancer was cured with an autologous transplant. This feat, carried out by the team of Dr Pierre-Olivier Pinelli, enabled the patient to return to an almost normal life.
A team of orthopedic surgeons from Marseille cured a 52-year-old woman who suffered from bone cancer in the pelvis. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy being ineffective, there was then only one remedy left for the applicant: to remove and replace the right part of the pelvis. Already performed in France by Toulouse doctors, this intervention was performed by Dr Pierre-Olivier Pinelli, orthopedic surgeon at the Conception Hospital in Marseille.
“Considering using a donor graft was problematic because of the large bone volume required,” explains the specialist in an interview with the newspaper La Provence. It was unrealistic to envisage good vascularization of the grafted unit. In addition, using a pelvic prosthesis posed attachment problems on the opposite half and the sacrum with the risk of breakage of the attachments, says the doctor. The option then chosen by the team of surgeons: autografting.
The intervention lasted 12 hours and consisted of grafting part of this patient’s femur instead of the right part of her pelvis affected by sarcoma. All without opening. “We used 15cm from the top of the femur, about a third of that bone, with the cartilage removed from the femoral head. This section was removed at the same time as the diseased pelvis to verify that the cancer had not affected it ”. Along with Dr Pinelli, a visceral surgeon reconstructed the abdominal wall to maintain the organs.
Result, six months later: the cancer has not resurfaced and the patient walks again using crutches. “She says she is in good health, even if the risk of relapse is possible, as with all cancers,” adds the doctor. Operations like this, this surgeon does not perform more than two per year.
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