SURGICAL SKILL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 57, 18 February 1927, Page 7

SURGICAL SKILL

SAVES BOY'B LIFE. REMOVALOFJHYDATID, Sydney, Jan, 27, From the large hospitals in Sydney come frequent instances of surgical skill saving the lives of patients, but probably none has been more remarkable than one reported from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital this week. Operating within a hair’s breadth of the brain, a surgeon saved the life of a boy by removing a hydatid cyst as large as a pigeon's i<gg from behind the child’s left eye. Sydney medical men, especially those specialising in eye work, have been intensely interested in thia extraordinary case. five-year-old boy, Arthur Randle. was brought to the hospital from a North Coast township with the tissue round his left eye so swollen and inflamed that the eyeball had been forced from the socket and was projecting over an inch beyond the contour of the face. Doctors were mystified until, after a series of operations, the cause of the trouble w’as located in a hydatid cyst at the back of the eye. This was removed and the boy is now making satisfactory progress towards recovery, although he has lost tile sight of tho eye. The occurrence is one of extreme rarity, and is likely to go on record in medical annals. According to the lad’s father, the swelling began five or six months ago. An operation was performed in the country, and a quantity of pus was .removed from the tissues about the eye. Only temporary relief was obtained, and as the swelling became worse, the boy was brought to Sydney for further treatment. At that time the tissues were so distended that the eyelid could not close. Tests were made to discover whether a malignant growth at the back of the eye was tire cause, but these gave a negative result. Then followed the extraordinary discovery of the presence of the cyst, and the still more extraordinary and delicate operation involving its removal. Otherwise certain death must have overtaken tho bov. In the long history of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital there has been no similar case and probably it has no precedents in this country where hydatids is more plentiful than in any other country in the world. In Randle’s case the hydatids must have passed through both liver and lungs liefore reaching their queer lodging place behind the eye.