SA: Toddler s life saved by world first gel operation

AAP General News (Australia)
08-06-1999
SA: Toddler s life saved by world first gel operation

By Sherrill Nixon

ADELAIDE, Aug 6 AAP - A Tennant Creek toddler's life has been saved by a world-first
procedure in which Adelaide doctors used a toothpaste-like gel to block abnormal blood vessels
near her lungs.

Twenty-month-old Saralee Dinnie underwent the one-hour operation at the Women's and
Children's Hospital (WCH) on Tuesday to treat a rare disease in which the blood vessels around
her lungs had grown in a disordered fashion.

The abnormal vessels lining her airway made feeding difficult and Saralee would cough up
the blood that would leak into her windpipe, raising the danger of drowning on her own blood.

But she was too small for the major surgery that would usually be used to treat this
condition.

So doctors turned to a new liquid gel technique, which had been performed on two adults in
the world but never on a child.

"We felt that her bleeds were life threatening and unless we did something, we wouldn't
keep her going," WCH head of pulmonary medicine James Martin said.

"Without this procedure ... she would not from my point of view have been treatable.

"She probably would have gone back to the Northern Territory without us being able to do
very much and she would have stood a very strong chance of dying."

The procedure was performed by WCH interventional radiologist Roger Davies, who had spent
time in Belgium to study the liquid gel, and University of Western Australia radiology
professor Mark Khangure.

Dr Davies inserted a catheter of less than one millimetre diameter through Saralee's groin,
guided it to the affected area and squeezed the new liquid gel through the catheter to block
the abnormal vessels.

He said the operation was made more risky because the artery supplying the windpipe area
was very close to the artery supplying the spinal cord, so he had to ensure he did not
inadvertently block the spinal cord artery and cause paraplegia.

The gel, which was developed in the United States, would now be used to treat similar
abnormalities in the brain and other parts of the body and could also be used to starve
tumours of blood.

"We are able to markedly reduce any blood flow to the abnormal blood vessels and what we
find ... is that the blood vessels shrink away and most of the time don't cause a further
problem," Dr Davies said.

"The gel is a very exciting new form of material to use in these sorts of cases."

AAP sn/it

KEYWORD: SARALEE

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