A boy with an extremely rare tumour was operated on by surgeons at St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital of the First Medical Unit of Lviv.
The doctors had to remove a part of the tongue where a tumour had formed, which would have prevented the child from speaking, then eating and finally breathing.
9-year-old Yegor Poluektov is from Zaporizhzhia region. His hometown of Melitopol has been occupied for more than two years now, and Yegor and his family live in Lviv. Recently, the boy noticed that his tongue was swollen. His mother felt a “pea” in the swelling and took her son to the specialists at St Nicholas Hospital.
During the ultrasound examination, doctors found a centimetre tumour on Yehor’s tongue. The tumour is extremely rare. It was necessary to operate on the child as soon as possible! The tumour was growing. At first, it would prevent Yegor from speaking, then from eating, and finally from breathing.
In order to cut out the tumour, the surgeons had to perform a resection, i.e. partial removal of the tongue itself. But how much of it would have to be taken away and how it would affect Yegor’s quality of life depended on whether the tumour was benign or malignant.
“Right during the operation, we performed a rapid biopsy of Yehor’s tumour. We took a piece of the tumour, sent it for histological examination, and within 15 minutes we knew it was a fibroid! That is, a benign tongue muscle tumour,” says Oleksandr Kalinchuk, surgeon and medical director of St Nicholas Hospital. – “During the surgery, our specialists removed the tumour, and along with it, they had to cut out 20% of the boy’s tongue. This is a so-called sparing resection. If the tumour had been malignant, they would have had to remove as much as half of the organ. The operation lasted an hour and a half and was successful. Now Yegor is completely healthy. For some time he will not be able to speak as well as before the operation, but in six months his speech should be fully restored.”