First brain tumour surgery without anesthesia held at Lahore General Hospital

LAHORE - A local government hospital has carried out a successful surgery of a cancer patient without general anaesthesia for the first time, showing the positive changes towards treatment facilities and technologies in Pakistan.

A team of neurosurgeons headed by Professor Dr. Rizwan Masood Butt removed more than 90 percent tumour of a patient during the historic brain surgery. It was held at the Lahore General Hospital, local media reported.

Dilawar, 40, visited the hospital around two weeks ago, complaining about a headache. When he underwent a medical examination, the doctors diagnosed him with a brain tumour.

The surgeons, later, decided to operate the patient in order to cure him. So, the team comprising 8-10 doctors conducted the surgery which remained successful.

The patient, who is a resident of Narowal, is now stable. Expressing his feelings, Dilawar said that the surgery was smooth enough that there was no pain.

Professor Rizwan said that a tumour was removed by making the effective part of the brain insensitive temporarily through local anaesthesia. The surgeon said that the patient will be discharged within five days.

Local anaesthesia is any technique to induce the absence of sensation in a specific part of the body, generally for the aim of inducing local analgesia, that is, local insensitivity to pain, although other local senses may be affected as well.

Butt said, in future, the backbone surgery will also be carried out using this technique without fainting the patients.

Pakistan's healthcare sector is often discussed for not being able to cater to the needs of the people. However, the sector is witnessing an improvement with each passing day especially in terms of specialized healthcare.

General anaesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical purposes.

Anaesthesia enables the painless performance of medical procedures that would otherwise cause severe or intolerable pain to an unanesthetized patient, or would otherwise be technically unfeasible