Neurosurgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore successfully removed a spinal cord tumor through a woman’s eye socket in a landmark case, the Washington Post reported May 4.
The 19-year-old patient had a small chordoma tumor that was strangling her spinal cord near the base of her skull, the report said. Her surgeons, Mohamed Labib, MD, and Alhusain Nagm, MD, PhD, considered different options to approach the tumor: radiation, removal through the back of the neck, entering through the mouth and entering through a nostril.
Dr. Labib had the idea of proceeding through the lower eye socket after publishing a paper on the technique in 2023. Approaching the spine through the eye socket was a new idea that Dr. Labib previously only performed on cadavers.
The neurosurgeons and ENT Andrea Hebert, MD, performed the first surgery May 1, 2024, and it took 19 hours. A second surgery two days later stabilized the junction between the bone at the base of the skull and the cervical spine.
Almost a year after surgery the woman’s prognosis is “excellent,” Dr. Labib said in the report.
