Outstanding Skills

Some of the outstanding procedures conducted in this hospital include ‘awake’ craniotomies, where brain surgery is performed while the patient is fully awake and alert to his/her surroundings. A 34-year-old lady from West Bengal was operated upon for a tumor in the left hemisphere of her brain which was located very close to the center for speech and comprehension abilities. To ensure that no harm was done to that facility, doctors asked her to sing her favorite song, the Rabindra Sangeet, aside from other activities, during the course of her three-and-a-half-hour long brain surgery at the Sita Bhateja Speciality hospital in Bengaluru. The patient had been given full counseling before the procedure to prepare her mentally for an awake surgery and shown her videos of prior awake brain surgeries. Most people would quake at the very thought of being awake through a brain surgery, but the interesting thing is that though the brain provides pain receptors throughout the body, it itself cannot perceive pain as it has no pain receptors!.

Another outstanding neurosurgery case was on a 10-year-old girl who was given a second lease on life here after undergoing two unsuccessful surgeries at other hospitals. She had developed a rare spinal cord disorder where the entire stretch of her spine was covered with multiple arachnoid cysts that had led to the development of a series of pockets of fluid collection around the spinal cord, leading to its compression.

Though she had been carried into the hospital by her mother on her first visit, by the time her treatment was over, she was an upright walking child, leading a normal life and attending school. These much-publicized cases establish the prowess of the neurosurgeons at this hospital!.

Some of the commonly seen neurological conditions at this center include various types of benign and malignant brain tumors, brain metastasis (cancers that have spread to the brain), tumors of the pituitary gland and skull base, malformations of the brain and its tissues, hydrocephalus (abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid within the brain), stroke, concussion (mild traumatic brain injury), neurofibromatosis (tumors growing on nerve tissue) and trigeminal neuralgia (chronic pain condition associated with this nerve), to name a few.

Available Neurological Surgeries

Routinely conducted neurosurgeries at this hospital include craniotomies by removing a part of the skull bone to access the brain for various procedures including tumor excision, micro-vascular decompression (relieving compression of nerves in the head), trans-nasal endoscopic pituitary surgery and expanded approaches to skull base tumors (a complicated surgery of accessing the brain through the nose, thus limiting recovery time), microsurgical excision of vestibular schwannoma with facial nerve preservation, CSF (cerebrospinal fluid) diversion procedures including programmable shunt intervention (for hydrocephalus, intracranial hypertension, etc), ventriculo-peritoneal shunt surgery, carotid endarterectomy and navigation guided brain tumor resection.

Image-guided surgeries are becoming more refined over the years and are used for complex neurosurgeries; the Sita Bhateja Speciality hospital is one of the few hospitals in the country to utilize this complicated method to navigate around within the skull and spine while performing surgeries. It is the neurosurgeons version of the GPS and enables the surgeon to make smaller exact incisions while navigating through the anatomy of the patient through use of 3D data previously fed into the computer. Smaller incisions also mean less time spent in recovery and less chances of complications.

Team of Neurosurgeons

The eminent surgeons that make up the core neurological team include Dr Arvind Bhateja and Dr Banu Prakash, with other supporting consultants and surgeons also joining in as and when required.

Dr Bhateja is the team leader as well as the Medical Director of the institute and specializes in neurosurgery. His interests lie in minimally invasive surgical techniques, trans-sphenoidal endoscopic approaches, spinal fusions as well as spinal fusions and skull-base approaches to neurosurgery.

He specializes in endoscopic endonasal approach for pituitary tumors which essentially involves going through the nose to access the pituitary gland; his other areas of specialization include microvascular decompression, vestibular schwannoma/acoustic neuroma surgery, minimally invasive TLIF, motion preservation spine surgery, spondylolisthesis, craniovertebral junction anomalies – C1-C2 lateral mass fusion, awake craniotomies, and some of the latest techniques in intra-operative neuro-monitoring and intra-operative fluorescence-guided tumor resections.

Dr Banu Prakash who is also central to this team has a special interest in deep brain stimulation, minimally invasive surgery, endovascular techniques and modern methods like 3D endoscopy guided neurosurgeries.He is also interested in robotic surgery and nano medicine for treatments of brain tumors.

After spending time with these calm and caring doctors, the patient automatically realizes he/she is in safe hands as they give respect and empathize with every need of the of the patient to make them feel comfortable. In this hospital every patient is a priority, such is the philosophy of the hospital.

Here, they make impossible dreams possible with their technical expertise and post-op care – and all this comes at very affordable rates too.