February Surgical Trip

Our very small team traveled to Amatitlan on February 22^nd to treat a young man who had been evaluated during our September 2018 mission with a large Giant Cell Tumor involving the majority of his proximal femur.  We had attempted to travel to Amatitlan in November to perform a resection, but one of our essential team members required emergency surgery which led to a postponement.  Mr. Gerry DeFilipo arrived on Thursday February 21^st to assess our supply situation and to begin readying equipment needed for the procedure.   Drs. Ramon Matos and Jay Brunette, Mr. Jason Glass and I arrived Friday afternoon, performed our pre-operative evaluation and performed surgery on Saturday.  The tumor was quite large and required several hours to remove in order to insure it’s complete resection.   While GCT’s are not considered to be “malignant”, they can metastasize to the lungs and result in death and since the patient was only 23 years old, it’s removal was essential.

The current plan is to follow up with the patient over the next several months and if there is no evidence of recurrence, we will plan on removing the methyl methacrylate (that was used as an adjunct to stabilize and further kill any residual tumor cells) and bone grafting the tumor site.

Many thanks to our team members who traveled to Amatitlan and to the hospital staff and who came in on their time off to assist in the preparations and sterilizations of equipment, etc. to allow us to treat this young man.