Pinhole Surgery - A Revolution in Medicine

The word “Surgery” is scary for anyone. No one likes their body to be cut. Surgeons the world over are thinking in terms of minimal invasive surgery - keyhole surgery.

Keyhole surgery was conceived by MIOT Hospitals and wherever possible we adopt keyhole surgery.

The advantages of Keyhole Surgery are:

• It causes least damage to the blood vessels, nerves, muscles, tendons etc.

• There is less bleeding and we can do away with the blood transfusion and the complications of blood transfusion.

• It does not expose the vital organs to external environment and thereby reduces the rate of infection.

• Only a few days of hospitalisation is required. The patient can return home in the shortest possible time.

• The scar no longer bothers young ladies!

From fantasy to reality
Ever since keyhole surgery was pioneered, surgeons began dreaming of reducing the size of the keyhole. Dreaming is important in science, because fantasy always precedes reality.

Every millimetre of our body is supplied with blood vessels. Even microscopic cells in our body get their nourishment from the blood, especially oxygen. Every living organ is nourished by oxygen, otherwise it dies. We see in every human body arteries carry oxygenated blood from the heart, and veins carry deoxygenated blood back to the heart.

Every part of the human body including the minute microscopic cells can be reached or accessed through these blood vessels. All it takes is a puncture the size of a pinhole.

Having said this, I would like you to see how we have reached every part of the human body through this route and made use of it for treating many serious illnesses which was not possible earlier.

This simple thought is going to cause a revolution in medicine.
Prof. Dr. P.V.A. Mohandas

The best kept secret in medicine is out!

Pinhole Surgery can make Open Surgeries “in vein”

No cutting. No pain. No bleeding. And generally, no anesthesia. MIOT Hospitals announces a breakthrough in options to open surgery.

Interventional radiology is a new speciality, which treats patients using minimally invasive techniques, usually as an alternative to traditional surgery.

This important subspecialty of radiology, contributed to some of the most significant medical developments. Most patients will have heard of "keyhole surgery" but interventional radiologists go one step further and perform "pinhole surgery".

Who is an Interventional Radiologist?
Interventional radiologists are doctors trained in radiology and experts in reading X-rays, ultrasounds, CAT scans and other medical images.

This expertise with imaging techniques enables them to guide small catheters and guide-wires through blood vessels to treat many diseases. These small catheters (tubes) are usually only a few millimetres in diameter.

In fact, interventional radiology is termed “pinhole surgery” because of the small holes that are made in the skin to perform these procedures.

Pinhole procedures can be performed for many surgeries:
These include blood vessel blocks. Blocks can occur in blood vessels anywhere in the body: in the neck, leading to a stroke; in the leg leading to gangrene; in the kidney leading to renal failure and so on. Previously reestablishing blood flow in these cases involved surgery. Now thanks to pinhole surgery they can be carried out with local anesthesia.

Opening Procedures
We insert a catheter through the groin vessel (chosen because it’s the widest vessel) and using imaging guidance navigate beyond the obstruction and insert a stent to restore the blood flow.

Closing Procedures
Pinhole surgery is also used to control abnormal bleeding anywhere in the body. This is called embolisation - performed for acute life threatening diseases like coughing up blood, uncontrolled bleeding in the intestines, during childbirth etc.

The conventional treatment for these was blood transfusions. Now, with pinhole surgery, we identify the site of the blood, use the catheter to access the blood vessel and block it with chemical agents.

Using the same technique we can block the blood supply to tumours thereby ‘starving’ them . Similarly, liver tumours can be “cooked” using radio frequency waves or chemo - therapy can be administered directly to them.

Advantages of Interventional Radiology

• Only a short hospital stay is required for most procedures.

• General anaesthesia is usually not required.

• Risk, pain and recovery time are reduced compared to conventional surgery.

Know your options
Pinhole surgery is available for many diseases, but few patients know to ask about them, or to seek a second opinion from an interventional radiologist.

Usually patients do not have direct contact with interventional radiologists. General practitioners still refer their patients to surgeons and rely on the surgeon to provide advice on available treatment options.

Surgeons may or may not know the minimally invasive treatments that another specialty offers. Eventually this situation will change and patients will be sent to the least invasive practitioner for consult first, but in the meantime, it is important for you to know that you may have a “pinhole option”.