After Complex Surgery at Bethesda Hospital East, She ‘Perfectly’ Defeats Rare, Aggressive Neck Tumor скачать в хорошем качестве

After Complex Surgery at Bethesda Hospital East, She ‘Perfectly’ Defeats Rare, Aggressive Neck Tumor

Carolyn Dias-Karch, 34, of Boynton Beach, helps recovering patients get back to independent, fully functioning lives as a physical therapist at Cornell Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine at Bethesda Hospital East. Recently, on an otherwise normal work day, a colleague noticed a mass on Carolyn's neck. She didn't have to go far to get expert advice on what turned out to be a challenging diagnosis by surgeons at Bethesda Hospital East. What initially looked like a growth in her thyroid gland was actually much more complex and serious - a very rare and aggressive tumor. {TRANSCRIPT}: - Hi, my name is Carolyn Dias-Karch. I'm 34 years old, and I live in Boynton Beach, Florida. I'm a physical therapist here at Cornell Institute for Rehabilitation at Bethesda East. My job is basically to help a patient who is not ready to go home. All of us are involved, nursing and doctors, to take care of this patient to get them ready to go home in the most functionally independent way that they possibly can. I am a Florida native, so with my mother and my father and our dog, Bailey, I was able to fortunately meet my life partner. His name is Gustavo Felipe. I do like the beach, just spend quality time with my family and my friends. I was working here. I had a case manager walk into the room with me and the patient, and we started to get to talking, and she kindly took me aside and just said, hey, you have something on your neck, you have a mass. I don't wanna freak you out or anything. But it was big enough for her to notice that I needed to get it checked out. I immediately called my primary care physician. She then referred me to go see an endocrinologist across the street. Everything was pointing to a thyroid, but also a vascular mass in nature. My initial impression when I saw Carolyn and I reviewed her images was that this was a very complicated problem, that the tumor that involved the carotid artery, the jugular vein and the vagus nerve in her neck, also extended into her chest, very close to her heart and onto the aortic arch. Here you see her heart. The liver is here, and this is the tumor, sitting, extending from her neck, surrounding the carotid artery, going down towards the aortic arch. And as you can see, the structures that this encases and involves are all incredibly delicate and important structures. I didn't know if it was going to be terminal or if I was even gonna survive the surgery. But the first moment that I met Dr. Lopez-Viego, he sat right in front of me and he asked me about my life plans and wanted to get to know me. And he reassured me that this wasn't gonna get in the way of any of those plans. And I got to breathe finally, in that moment, when he said that. The tumor that Carolyn presented with is called a solitary fibrous tumor. And it's a basically cancer of the head and neck, sometimes extending into the chest, that has variable rates of aggressiveness, but is very difficult to manage, and is an extremely rare tumor. There's only a handful of these tumors reported in the literature anywhere in the world, and no center has any significant experience with it. So as it was basically coming up with a clever solution to a difficult problem. And that's something that we're very good at here. Dr. Lopez-Viego was a godsend surgeon, and he was gonna take care of me. I didn't have any doubts in my mind, because of how meticulous and how caring and compassionate he was. I met with Carolyn and her parents the day before the operation, and I discussed with them all the potential issues and the potential things that we might have to do surgically, including opening her chest, clamping her heart, putting her on cardiopulmonary bypass, reconstructing her carotid artery, reconstructing her vagus or her jugular vein, resecting her vagus nerve, which would leave her permanently hoarse. We discussed all the potential problems, including the potential of a stroke, a long-term disability related to the resection of this tumor, and the possibility of the tumor would be incompletely resected and therefore not cured. And we were confident that we could take care of her. I knew going into my hospital room that my surgical team had prepared for absolutely everything. I had to trust that God was my surgeon. He was going to be helping their hands. Carolyn did perfectly. The operation which four surgeons participated on was effective, the blood loss was minimal. There was not a single complication of all the lengthy complications that I had to think about for a month. And she literally left the hospital the day after the operation. And the final pathology report returned with clear margins and a successful operation.