Trans­forms Thy­roid treat­ment at Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex

A ground-break­ing Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion of the Thy­roid Gland con­duct­ed re­cent­ly at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) is mak­ing waves as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary ap­proach to min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive thy­roid treat­ments. This cut­ting-edge pro­ce­dure, the lat­est in ther­mal ab­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy, of­fers a new hori­zon in ad­dress­ing be­nign le­sions and se­lect cas­es of thy­roid ma­lig­nan­cy.

In­ter­ven­tion­al Ra­di­ol­o­gy

This pro­ce­dure, which was re­cent­ly per­formed on a 33-year-old fe­male pa­tient, with a pro­gres­sive­ly en­larg­ing right, be­nign thy­roid mass demon­strat­ed the team­work of em­i­nent med­ical spe­cial­ists. The typ­i­cal ap­proach for treat­ing thy­roid le­sions of this kind, ac­cord­ing to at­tend­ing ENT sur­geons at EWM­SC Drs. So­laiman Ju­man and Nicholas Fi­garo, is sur­gi­cal hemithy­roidec­to­my. How­ev­er, she re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion about non-sur­gi­cal al­ter­na­tives. This led to the en­gage­ment of vas­cu­lar and in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gist Dr. Ash­ton Ram­sun­dar, who re­cent­ly re­turned to Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter com­plet­ing his fel­low­ship in vas­cu­lar and in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gy at the es­teemed Sin­ga­pore Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Dur­ing his fel­low­ship, Dr. Ram­sun­dar had the priv­i­lege of train­ing in In­ter­ven­tion­al On­col­o­gy, a sub­di­vi­sion of in­ter­ven­tion­al ra­di­ol­o­gy that treats on­co­log­i­cal dis­eases us­ing, among oth­er in­no­v­a­tive modal­i­ties, mi­crowave ab­la­tion. His pro­fi­cien­cy in mi­crowave ab­la­tion of many or­gans, such as the thy­roid, liv­er, kid­ney, and lung, ren­dered him a cru­cial re­source dur­ing the dis­cus­sion of this pa­tient’s man­age­ment.

Mi­crowave ab­la­tion in the Pub­lic sec­tor

Al­though mi­crowave ab­la­tion was not ini­tial­ly avail­able in the pub­lic sec­tor, Mr. Davlin Thomas, the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, played a piv­otal role in spear­head­ing this ini­tia­tive. Mr. Thomas’s com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing health­care and his lead­er­ship in co­or­di­nat­ing ef­forts were in­stru­men­tal in bring­ing this nov­el pro­ce­dure to fruition, and has since en­gaged the pro­cure­ment process to pur­chase a new mi­crowave ab­la­tion ma­chine to per­form var­i­ous ther­mal ab­la­tion pro­ce­dures at the EWM­SC.

Dr. Ram­sun­dar gen­er­ous­ly do­nat­ed his mi­crowave ab­la­tion ma­chine and con­sum­ables for the pro­ce­dure, mark­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and health­care lead­er­ship. The pa­tient, un­der­stand­ing the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits, read­i­ly ac­cept­ed the of­fered so­lu­tion.

Al­lows same day surgery

The pa­tient was kept cog­nisant the en­tire time dur­ing the Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion pro­ce­dure, which was per­formed ex­clu­sive­ly un­der lo­cal anaes­thet­ic. Dr. Ram­sun­dar care­ful­ly in­sert­ed the mi­crowave nee­dle in­to the thy­roid gland with the use of ul­tra­sound guid­ance, en­sur­ing that the le­sion would be de­stroyed ac­cu­rate­ly and that the sur­round­ing nor­mal thy­roid tis­sue, blood ves­sels, and nerves would be pre­served. Fol­low­ing the pro­ce­dure, the pa­tient re­ceived short-term mon­i­tor­ing be­fore be­ing re­leased that same day.

Suit­able for pa­tients with Im­plantable de­vices

Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion’s ad­van­tages lie in its sta­tus as the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy for ther­mal ab­la­tion. Pro­vid­ing uni­form de­liv­ery of heat to the thy­roid nod­ule, this tech­nique ef­fi­cient­ly de­stroys tar­get­ed tis­sues, re­sult­ing in a quick­er pro­ce­dure when com­pared to oth­er ther­mal ab­la­tion tech­niques. No­tably, Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion elim­i­nates the need for ground­ing pads and elec­tric cur­rent, mak­ing it suit­able for pa­tients with im­plantable car­diac de­vices and preg­nant pa­tients.

Hos­pi­tal re­cov­ery time re­duced

Dr. Ram­sun­dar gave a de­tailed ex­pla­na­tion of the process, say­ing, “The main goal of mi­crowave ab­la­tion is to pre­cise­ly and lo­cal­ly elim­i­nate neo­plas­tic cells while caus­ing the least amount of harm to near­by healthy tis­sues. It pro­vides an al­ter­na­tive to con­ven­tion­al sur­gi­cal re­sec­tion, which helps pa­tients re­cov­er more quick­ly and spend less time in the hos­pi­tal.”

Prop­er pa­tient se­lec­tion and the pro­ce­dure’s po­ten­tial to re­duce thy­roid nod­ule size over a pe­ri­od of 6–9 months, with com­plete res­o­lu­tion an­tic­i­pat­ed for nod­ules small­er than 4 cm are key fac­tors in its suc­cess. An ap­prox­i­mate 80% re­duc­tion in size is ex­pect­ed for nod­ules larg­er than 4 cm.

A new era inthy­roid treat­ment

Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion is not on­ly a game-chang­er in the treat­ment of thy­roid con­di­tions but al­so holds promise in the broad­er con­text of can­cer care. Its ver­sa­til­i­ty, re­peata­bil­i­ty, and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with oth­er modal­i­ties such as chemother­a­py or ra­di­a­tion ther­a­py make it an in­valu­able ad­di­tion to com­pre­hen­sive can­cer care plans.

This ground-break­ing Mi­crowave Ab­la­tion pro­ce­dure at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, made pos­si­ble by the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als like Dr. Ash­ton Ram­sun­dar, Dr. So­laiman Ju­man and Dr Nicholas Fi­garo and health­care lead­er­ship un­der Mr. Davlin Thomas, sig­ni­fies a new era in thy­roid treat­ment in the NCRHA. This high­lights the po­ten­tial of in­no­v­a­tive, min­i­mal­ly in­va­sive tech­niques with­in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, pro­vid­ing hope for en­hanced pa­tient care and ex­pand­ed ac­cess to ad­vanced med­ical in­ter­ven­tions.