Dr. Nicolás Devaud
Instituto Oncológico FALP - Santiago de Chile, Chile
Benefits
✔ Improve understanding of the areas covered by the tumour.
✔ Detailed planning of the surgical strategy
✔ Anticipate critical situations
✔ Improving interaction between the surgical team
✔ Educational value
Clinical case
A 41 year-old male patient was found to have a giant tumour after a medical check-up.
After the relevant studies, the diagnosis of a well-differentiated liposarcoma was made, which covered a large abdominal area including the left kidney, tail of the pancreas, mesentery, descending colon, psoas muscle and iliac artery.
Surgical plan and outcome in the operating room
Dr Devaud had the patient's virtual anatomical model, which was used to plan the steps to follow in the treatment of the tumour.
As a first step, the patient underwent neoadjuvant radiotherapy, which reduced the size of the lesion.
This was followed by multivisceral surgery with en bloc resection and reconstruction of the area after excision.
The 3D biomodelling was important to have a projection of the lesion and to accurately recognise the affected vasculature, both general and of each organ, helping to make safe decisions.
In addition, complex cases such as this one require a joint approach with different specialists, so the biomodel facilitates the understanding of the pathology and the foresight of possible scenarios.
Finally, Dr Devaud acknowledged that 3D reconstructions also have an educational component of relevance both for doctors in training and for those who are not part of the surgical team, for example, when giving a webinar or conference.
Other applications in digestive surgery and HPB: "What are the benefits of 3D technologies for resecting pancreatic tumours?" At the Pueyrredón Clinic in Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Dr. Federico Garcia used a virtual biomodel for a patient with pancreatic cancer that allowed him to operate more safely, reduce operating time and bleeding.