Doctors at Aakash Healthcare kindle a ray of hope
The Sunday Mail
New Delhi: Doctors at Aakash Healthcare have kindled a new ray of hope by enabling children—who had given up on ever walking again—to walk, using bone from their own mothers for treatment. Doctors at the Dwarka-based Aakash Healthcare employed a challenging technique to reconstruct damaged bones in children by utilizing the mother’s fibula bone. Notably, this technique was used to reconstruct leg bones, whereas it was previously primarily used for issues involving the arms. In 2021, the medical team at Aakash Healthcare operated on a 16-year-old girl whose thigh bone had deteriorated due to a long-standing infection; her mother aided the treatment by donating a portion of her own fibula bone. Dr. Ashish Chaudhary, Director and Head of Orthopedics and Robotic Joint Replacement at Aakash Healthcare, stated that even after five years, the reconstructed bone is growing well, and the girl is able to walk. Furthermore, this technique has been used at Aakash Healthcare to treat other children battling cancer and severe bone-related conditions, including patients from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Some of these children had been advised to undergo leg amputation in their home countries, but their families turned to Delhi in search of better treatment. Dr. Ashish Chaudhary remarks that a mother’s bone is not merely a graft, but a priceless gift to her child.
These successful operations were performed by a team led by Dr. Ashish Chaudhary, Director and Head of Orthopedics and Robotic Joint Replacement at Aakash Healthcare, Dwarka. This treatment has offered a ray of hope to children from both India and abroad who are battling leg-related ailments. Over the past five years, the team has successfully performed numerous such surgeries. The surgical team was led by Dr. Ashish Chaudhary (Director and Head of Orthopedics and Robotic Joint Replacement at Akash Healthcare), Dr. Arun Kumar Giri (Director of Surgical Oncology), and Dr. Abhishek Kumar Sambharia (Orthopedics Consultant).
According to Dr. Chaudhary, four other children from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—three of whom had cancer—underwent similar treatments. A five-year-old child from Uzbekistan had a malignant tumor in the right thigh bone; the tumor was removed on September 10, and a long section of the bone was reconstructed using a segment of his mother’s fibula and secured with a plate. Five days later, an 11-year-old boy from Uzbekistan underwent surgery. He had ‘chondroblastic osteosarcoma’ (a type of cancer) in the lower part of his right thigh bone (femur). After removing the tumor, the bone above the knee was reconstructed using his mother’s fibula and a specially designed plate. Both children had previously been advised to undergo above-knee amputations in their home countries, and both families traveled from Uzbekistan to Delhi for the surgery. Also in September, a three-year-old boy from Tajikistan underwent surgery; he had ‘Ewing’s sarcoma’ and had already completed five rounds of chemotherapy. The tumor was removed from his right arm bone (humerus), and the bone was reconstructed using a segment (strut) of his mother’s fibula. An 11-year-old girl from Uzbekistan suffered from congenital ‘pseudoarthrosis’ (non-union of the bone) in the tibia of her left leg; the area had become infected, and the wound refused to heal. In April, the infected bone and old implants were removed. In May, a fibula bone graft from her mother was performed, alongside ankle fusion and the placement of a customized plate.
Dr. Ashish Chaudhary said, “When that first mother offered to donate her bone, we had very little information to guide us. We read as much as we could and found that such procedures had previously been done only for the arm. We wondered if it could work for the leg and decided the child deserved a chance; otherwise, amputation would have been the only remaining option. Five years later, her bone is growing, and she is walking and living her life. What better proof could there be?”
He added, “A mother’s bone does more than just fill a gap. It is a gift from her own body, possessing the same biological properties. What always stays with me is the question a mother asked before the surgery: ‘Is my bone strong enough for my child?’ After all, mothers have already given these children the gift of life once.” Here, they helped the child walk again.
Dr. Chaudhary explained that this method also offers practical benefits to families; in cases where the child’s own bone has been destroyed by the disease, a matching and readily available graft can be used. Both the mother and the child were closely monitored during the surgery, and the team emphasized that the mother’s recovery was just as important as the child’s.
