SINGAPORE – A team of surgeons from the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) has removed a 2.5cm brain tumour through a patient’s eye socket.
The eight-hour surgery, which harnessed a technique used for the first time here to remove a tumour, was carried out in November, and the patient, 38-year-old Teong Wen Han, was able to leave the hospital after only three days.
Mr Teong, a learning and development manager, suffered a seizure on Oct 9 before crashing his car on the Central Expressway (CTE), damaging four vehicles and destroying a lamp post near the Bishan exit.
“The last thing I remembered was passing some fruits to my parents before starting my journey. I regained consciousness at the hospital with my neck in a brace and I was lying on a spinal board,” he said.
Mr Teong said that according to a paramedic, the witness who called the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) had told them he was “unconscious and twitching”.
“So at the emergency department, I went through several tests, including a CT (computed tomography) scan, to ascertain why I crashed,” he told The Straits Times.
From the scan, doctors found a 2.5cm brain tumour behind his right eye.
Mr Teong said the closest thing to a symptom that he experienced was a headache every morning, “but that was solved after my morning coffee”.
“I always thought it was because of the lack of caffeine,” he said.
The tumour was growing from the protective layer covering his brain.
Its location also made it hard to reach if surgeons adopted the traditional open approach, where a section of the skull is removed to create wide access to the brain.
It was also in a high-risk area. “Due to its location, it was more difficult to reach because it is at the base of the skull and the brain is on top of it,” NNI neurosurgeon Jensen Ang explained.
“It was also quite close to the optic nerve as well as some of the blood vessels and the cranial nerve that controls the eyeball movement.”
