The surgical team arrived at the First Transit Hotel in Hyderabad, India on January 8th with the last of us there by 3AM India time on Sunday, January 9, 2011, a long 24 hour trip from  the USA. The bus was loaded, and we departed for Khammam at 10AM, arriving at 4:30PM after a 200+km of bad roads and alarming traffic.  Upon arriving the Surgical Team went right to work unpacking the 18 duffle bags of surgical supplies donated by supporters from the USA and readying the operating room at St. Mary’s Hospital which had not been used since our Free Surgical Camp last year.

Monday morning the Surgical Team started screening over 150 patients who were waiting throughout the day to be seen. We scheduled 6  people for that afternoon, under local anesthesia, small cases of lumps and bumps. Dr. Joe B III, Dr. Bob, Joe B IV. and the Fordham duo, Sam and Andrew completed them while Dr. Renny and myself continued to screen patients for the rest of the day. We finished the screening clinic at 8PM, having seen all who were there.

We finished 17 cases on Tuesday and each day from then on we completed between 12 to 20 procedures,  averaging 16 cases a day. The case mix was about the same as usual, hernias, both incisional and inguinal, hydrocoeles of all sizes, thyroids, hysterectomies, rectal, breast, and burn scar releases. See the accompanying case list.

There were the usual mystery cases which we had never seen before, which defied our diagnosis and treatment. These cases we sent to Mamata, the local private medical school. Mamata is very selective about the cases it takes, but which it does for free. The rare, exotic ones we send over are almost always taken in. One such case was a lady with a marshmallow-sized mass on her nose between her eyes. A previous fine needle biopsy diagnosed it as a lipoma (fatty tumor). When we got into it, it was nothing of the sort. The tumor oozed clear fluid like tears, and we thought it might be a lacrimal tumor. We certainly had not had experience with such a problem, so we closed her and sent her to Mamata where she had to wait a week for their cat-scan to come back on line. An ophthalmologist and a neurosurgeon took her in.

Dr. Joe, who does all the thyroid surgery found several thyroid cancers, biopsying them, and getting them into proper follow-up treatment for life. Dr. Bob Dwyer a urologist, finally got to do a cystoscopy this year. Usually, he’s stuck doing the lion’s share of the hydrocoeles, which are unlike those seen in the USA, very big indeed. He also does hernias, the lumps and bumps, and the stuff that Joe & I do.

My daughter Liz Johnson, scrubbed in on a case with me, found a sebaceous cyst “too yucky”, and had to bow out. She reinvented herself and was a great help keeping the OR Log, and other records.   All the Gyn work was done by our old friend, Dr. Sulochana Christopher who not only screened the Gyn problems, but doing the abdominal  and the vaginal hysterectomies as well. The cultural ethic behind Gyn care is quite different in this part of India compared to the USA, with the husband often making the demands, either actively or passively (don’t come home until you’ve got that thing out!).

I am very proud of our team this year and I am every year!
Dr. George Longsteth