05/05/2025

Surgeons Bid for a Medical First

They want to remove a spinal tumor through a patient’s eye

Just before the medical staff wheeled Karla Flores into the operating room so that surgeons could work inside her head for the third time in less than a month, the 19-year-old budding manicurist said goodbye to her mom and dad. She didn’t know if she would see them again.

Her previous surgeries in the same building at the University of Maryland Medical Center had been hard enough: a pair of 14-hour procedures to rid Flores’s brain of a rare bone tumor the size of a chicken's egg. This time, the surgeons faced a greater challenge. A second, smaller chordoma was strangling Flores’s spinal cord near the base of the skull. After much discussion, the medical team had decided to try something that had never been done. They would remove the spinal tumor through her left eye socket.

If the surgical path was not precise to within a few millimeters, Flores could lose all movement below the neck or suffer a fatal brain-stem stroke. If the procedure was successful, however, it would open a new avenue for doctors around the world treating difficult-to-reach tumors.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.