British “BMC Surgery” publishes Syrian research paper on rare surgery conducted by Syrian doctor at Albassel Hospital in Tartous
The British “BMC Surgery” Journal recently published a medical research paper for a rare surgery conducted by Syrian doctor Shawki Mahmoud from the Department of General Surgery at Albassel Hospital in the Syrian city of Tartous.
The research, titled “A rare serious case of retroperitoneal paraganglioma misdiagnosed as duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumor”, is a new achievement for the Syrian health sector in general and the for the staff of Albassel Hospital in particular.
Dr. Shawki conducted the surgery with the assistance of a specialized medical team that consisted of Dr. Maissam Salami, from the Department of Anaesthesiology at Albassel Hospital, and Hosam Salman, from the Department of Histopathology at the same hospital.
The research provided detailed explanation of the surgical operation. Dr. Shawki said that this surgery is qualitative, rare and highly dangerous and it is necessary to be shared widely at the local and international level.
Dr. Shawki presented the case as follows:
A 41- year- old lady presented with mild left flank discomfort. She had experienced recurrent anxiety attacks accompanied by palpitations and headache which were managed previously as panic attacks. Radiologic investigations showed a retroperitoneal mass that located anteromedial to the left kidney, separated from the left adrenal gland and adherent to the 4th duodenal segment. During admission, her vital signs showed slight elevation of blood pressure (140\90–160\110) mmHg, thus 24-h urine metanephrine and normetanephrine were requested and the results revealed normal values. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy failed to pass beyond the 3th duodenal segment and showed no pathologic evidence. According to her findings, a diagnosis of duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) was suspected. During laparotomy, crises of hypertension and tachycardia followed by severe hypotension made the resection of the misdiagnosed mass very tricky. Immunohistochemical staining studies confirmed the diagnosis of paraganglioma.
In the conclusion, Dr. Shawki said that
Paraganglioma is a life threatening disease and should always be considered as a differential diagnosis of asymptomatic retroperitoneal mass.
According to Dr. Shawki, the research aims at presenting a challenging case of an undiagnosed retroperitoneal paraganglioma and at alarming colleagues from such troubles.
He stressed that despite the economic siege imposed on Syria and the limited capabilities, we managed to perform a rare surgery.
Find more details about this rare case in this link:
https://bmcsurg.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12893-020-00712-z
Hamda Mustafa