Pittsburgh Doctors Perform Rare Brain Tumor Removal Surgery

PITTSBURGH,None — Doctors in Pittsburgh have performed a rare brain tumor removal surgery, where the tumor was removed through the person's eye.

Surgeons said it may sound more painful, but it is actually less invasive than traditional methods.

"I got up and realized I could not see out of my left eye at all," said David Barsottini. "When you hear the term ‘brain tumor', you feel like you're being hit."

Besides costing him his eyesight, Barsottini said the tumor altered his personality.

"I had isolated myself from everybody. They were talking to me, I could hear the words, but it was not registering," he said.

Dr. Khaled Aziz a neurosurgeon with Allegheny General Hospital, said that is commonly what happens when a tumor presses on the front of the brain. He said that is the part of the brain that controls personality and behavior.

"When you not only have that size tumor, but also all the brain swelling around it, this is when you start to have these symptoms," said Aziz.

Aziz said Barsottini's tumor was about the size of a lemon, which made him a candidate for a new type of surgery that is only performed in Pittsburgh. He said it requires two surgeons in completely different fields of medicine. Instead of a hairline incision, surgeons use the natural crease in the eyelid as a place to hide the scars.

"A lot of what I do traditionally, without this procedure, is working around the eye socket, doing a lot of eyelid surgery, removing orbital tumors," said Dr. Erik Happ, a occuloplastic surgeon. "I kind of joke and feel like I am more or less the handyman. I do the opening and the closing and let him do the hard part.

The "hard part," Aziz said, involves a laser and other tools that help control blood supply in the brain and and then deflates the tumor before it is removed.

"Pain is less. Discomfort is less, and cosmetically it's better," said Aziz.

Doctors Happ and Aziz said they have done 40 of these procedures together over the past 4 years.

Several weeks after his surgery Barsottini is now starting to see a brighter future.

"The first thing he noticed is that he started to see light with his left eye," said Aziz.

Aziz and Happ said determining whether the project is right for a particular patient is decided on a case-by-case basis.

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