Vellore: A team of surgeons at Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore has successfully performed robotic slide tracheoplasty on an eight-year-old boy for a condition called congenital tracheal stenosis (CTS), a rare condition affecting approximately one in 64,500 live births, where a child is born with an abnormally narrow windpipe. The surgery was supported by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a high-level form of life support used for patients whose lungs or heart are severely damaged.While a healthy trachea consists of C-shaped cartilage rings bridged by muscle, children with CTS possess rigid, O-shaped rings that severely restrict airflow. Often accompanied by heart defects, the condition can cause life-threatening breathing issues at birth, though some children may only develop symptoms as they grow.The standard treatment is a slide tracheoplasty to widen the airway, a procedure that requires highly invasive surgery, such as a neck incision or splitting the breastbone to reach the affected area.The success of the procedure was the result of months of meticulous preparation, including practice on cadaveric animal models and the use of patient-specific 3D-printed resin models of the trachea and rib cage. The four-hour long procedure had the ECMO team collaborating with New York-based paediatric ECMO specialist Dr Susheel Kumar and live tele-mentoring by surgeon Dr Robert Cerfolio, who provided guidance from New York.Following the successful reconstruction, the child was electively ventilated in the paediatric ICU for 48 hours. The patient’s recovery was exceptionally smooth, leading to a discharge on just the sixth day.
