Hospital performs rare robotic surgery on eight-year-old boy in Vellore

The Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, has successfully performed robotic slide tracheoplasty on an eight-year-old boy supported by Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) for a condition called congenital tracheal stenosis.

According to a press release, the surgery, which was performed by the Department of Paediatric Surgery, marks a revolutionary advancement in minimally invasive airway reconstruction for children.

The pioneering operation was a masterclass in multidisciplinary collaboration, uniting experts from Paediatric and Cardiac Anaesthesia and Paediatric Cardiothoracic surgeons. Adding a global dimension to the procedure, the surgery was live-telementored by Dr. Robert Cerfolio, a world-renowned Robotic Thoracic surgeon based in New York.

Congenital tracheal stenosis is a rare condition (affecting approximately one in 64,500 live births) where a child is born with an abnormally narrow trachea (windpipe). Often accompanied by heart defects, the condition can cause life-threatening breathing issues at birth.

The standard treatment is a slide tracheoplasty to widen the airway — a procedure that traditionally requires highly invasive surgery, such as a neck incision or a sternotomy (splitting the breastbone) to reach the affected area within the chest.

On the other hand, the robotic platform has revolutionised surgical outcomes by enabling fine dissection from the chest deep into the neck, providing the precision necessary to achieve a perfectly airtight anastomosis.

The robotic surgery also helped in patient recovery, reducing the intubation period to just two days and the subsequent ward stay to only four days, allowing for a safe discharge in less than a week.

CMC Vellore gratefully acknowledges the vital contributions of Robert Cerfolio (New York) for robotic telementoring, Susheel Kumar (New York) for paediatric ECMO expertise, and S. Solaman Bobby (Alliance University, Bangalore) for the 3D-printed anatomical models, the release said.