The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Chandigarh Stories

HEALTH

First-of-its-kind spine surgery
Small holes, less pain, big result
Neelam Sharma
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 16
Fifteen-year-old accident victim Sonu’s surgery for a spinal fracture at the Department of Orthopaedics, Government Medical College and Hospital, Sector 32, here is being hailed by the surgeons as the first-of-its-kind spine surgery in the country. Instead of making a 10-inch incision in the back to fix the screws, the surgery has been performed by making four small incisions, each not more than 1.5 inch long, by using indigenous surgical equipment.

This percutaneous pedicle screw fixation surgery has drastically reduced the trauma and morbidity of the patient. The smaller incisions have also ensured lesser chances of getting infections. The two-hour surgery has come with no additional cost for the patient.

“We have used indigenous equipment for performing the surgery. We have been performing such surgeries by opening the spinal area by making a long incision and then fixing the screws in the area around the spinal cord, which is not more than 9 mm in size. In this surgery, we made small incisions in the back, put in wires and introduced the screws. In the absence of any big cut in the back, the view of the area where the screws had to be fixed was available only through X-ray imaging. The surgery was performed by constantly looking at the X-ray monitor,” said Prof Raj Bahadur, Head of the department.

The decision of not performing conventional surgery on the patient was taken at the operating table on Tuesday and the patient did not know that there would be something special in his surgery. “Since the patient is young, we decided to go in for this surgery. The main consideration was of having confidence in executing this surgery,” he said.

SPORTS

J.P. Atray cricket meet from Sept 25
Our Sports Reporter

Chandigarh, September 16
Top-ranked cricketers, including Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Dinesh Mongia, Mohammed Kaif, Rohan Gavaskar and Pankaj Dharmani, will play the XIth All-India J.P. Atray Cricket Tournament to be held at various venues in Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali from September 25 to October 3.

The tournament is one of the graded tournament of the BCCI and held in the memory of J.P. Atray, a former ADGP, Haryana.

According to Mr Vishwajeet Khanna, chairman, organising committee, 12 national-ranked teams, including ONGC, PCC, MP Cricket Association, Canara Bank Cricket Association, BPCL, Indian Airlines, Air-India and Indian Oil, are expected to participate. Mr Sushil Kapoor, organising secretary of the meet, says the teams have been drawn into four pools of three teams each.

Each team will play once with the remaining two teams of its pool. Top teams from each pool will qualify for the semifinals. The matches will be of 40 overs each and the tournament will be played on latest ICC rules. The winning team to get four points, losing team zero and in case of abandoned tie, two points each will be given.

Tennis tournament: SGGS College, Sector 26, and PEC, Sector 12, surged ahead by beating Arya College, Ludhiana, 2-0, and GGD SD College, Sector 32, 2-1, respectively, in the Panjab University Inter-College Lawn Tennis (Men) Tournament played at Panjab University.

Sports meet: The Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan Sports Meet concluded here on Thursday.

In the u-16 boys’ cricket meet, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Mullanpur, emerged winner, while Kendriya Vidyalaya, AFS, was second. In u-16 kabaddi, Kendriya Vidyalaya-I, Halwara, won the meet, while Kendriya Vidyalaya-3, Bathinda, was runner-up.

The valedictory function was held at Kendriya Vidyalaya Air Force high grounds, Chandigarh. Wg Cdr D.D. Roy was the chief guest and gave away prizes.

Football meet: As many as 19 boys’ teams and 11 girls’ teams will participate in the six-a-side football tournament to be played at St Xavier’s Senior Secondary School, Sector 44. The four-day meet, which will begin on Friday, will have matches played on knockout basis. All the matches will be played from 9am to 4.30pm.

Cricket trials: The Chandigarh Cricket Association will hold trials to select the Chandigarh district u-19 cricket team at Government Senior Secondary School, Sector 19, on Friday at 2.30pm. The players born on or after September 1,1985, will be eligible to take part in the trials. This was stated by Mr Surinder Singh ‘Baijee’, secretary of the association.

Ambala
Judo team: A judo team of Ambala has performed well in sub-junior, junior and senior categories in the state-level judo championships.

Ambala district judo association secretary Arun Moudgil said the team had won 17 medals at the championships held at Sirsa.

In the girls’ sub-junior/junior, Sapna Chauhan won gold, Komal silver and Neha Chauhan and Pooja Rai bronze. Among boys, Anil Kumar won silver and Manish Dhiman and Gurmeet Singh bronze.

In seniors, Harneet Kaur won silver and Ishpreet Kaur, Neha Chauhan and Preeti bronze. In the Kurukshetra University Judo Championships, Ravinder and Sandeep won bronze. In girls, Ishpreet Kaur won gold and Harneet Kaur silver.