Lucknow: In what is being dubbed a first-of-its-kind achievement in India, doctors at Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) performed robotic liver surgery on two infants weighing less than six kilograms.Both the babies had tumours involving the left lobe of the liver and underwent chemotherapy before surgery. The procedures were performed by the Department of Paediatric Surgical Super Specialties on a seven-month-old boy weighing around 5 kg and a seven-month-old girl weighing around 6 kg.“Liver surgery in infants is particularly challenging because of the limited abdominal working space, delicate anatomy and small-calibre blood vessels and bile ducts,” head Basant Kumar said on Thursday.Adding that robotic surgery requires precise dissection and bleeding control while preserving adequate liver function, he noted: “The procedures demonstrated the feasibility of using robotic technology for complex hepatobiliary surgery even in very young and low-weight children.”Crediting colleagues in departments of paediatric anaesthesia, paediatric gastroenterology, radiodiagnosis and others for the feat, he said: “To the best of our knowledge, the two cases are first robotic liver procedures performed on infants in India.”
