Materia Medica Malaysiana

HUKM surgeons score a first in local medicine

SURGEONS at Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM) scored a first in local medical history recently when they used a new tissue engineering technique to operate on a young rheumatism patient, reported China Press.
The paper added that aside from being the first operation of its kind in the country, it was also conducted by local orthopaedic surgeons.
In medical term, the operation is known as the Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation involving cartilage developed by the hospital’s tissue engineering laboratory.
The patient was a 19-year-old youth, who was suffering from a type of rheumatism called osteochondritis dissecans on his left knee for over a year.
The ailment resulted from a loss of blood supply to the bone area of the knee beneath the joint surface. The affected bone and the covering cartilage had gradually loosened and had caused the patient much pain.
The young man was reported to be recovering well from the 2½ hour operation, which was carried out on Jan 12 by a team headed by the HUKM’s tissue engineering laboratory chief Assoc Prof Dr Ruszymah Idrus.
The daily quoted HUKM orthopaedic specialist Dr Badrul Akmal Hisham Md Yusoff as saying that the cartilage used in the operation was cultivated by the hospital.
He told the paper that the laboratory was set up in 1990 to cultivate tissue as well as cartilage for throats, ears, joints and bone marrows.
On the cost of the operation, he said the patient had only to pay about RM1,000.
He added that this was much cheaper than rates charged by hospitals in Australia (about RM41,800) or Singapore (about RM21,000).