Doctors in the UK have just accomplished an amazing surgical feat: removing a person’s brain tumor through their eyesocket.
Surgeons at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust performed the procedure on 40-year-old Ruvimbo Kaviya last year. The surgery, the first of its kind ever conducted in the UK, is intended to be a less invasive treatment for certain tumors located at the base of the skull. Kaviya was able to go home from the hospital within days and now only sports a small, nondescript scar along her left eye.
Kaviya was diagnosed with several meningiomas (tumors that grow in the meninges, the protective layers of the brain) in 2023, following persistent bouts of headaches and other symptoms. The tumors were located in her cavernous sinus, a network of nerves and vessels found behind the eyes that direct the flow of blood away from the brain.
Ordinarily, doctors would attempt to remove these tumors via an open craniotomy, a procedure that involves removing a piece of skull and adjusting the position of the brain to reach the cancer. But as luck would have it, surgeons in recent years have been experimenting with a new technique for removing skull base tumors, called the endoscopic trans-orbital approach. And in this case, Kaviya appeared to be a perfect candidate for the surgery.
“This technique allows us to remove tumors without opening the skull or having to retract or compress the brain. The minimally invasive nature of the procedure significantly reduces trauma, enabling patients to recover faster with minimal visible scarring,” said Asim Sheikh, a consultant skullbase and neurovascular neurosurgeon at Leeds who performed Kaviya’s surgery, in a statement from the hospital.
The doctors first practiced their procedure using 3D replica models that were created using scans of Kaviya’s skull. They performed the surgery in February 2024, which only necessitated making a roughly half-inch cut along Kaviya’s eyelid. The cancer was then removed using an endoscope (a flexible tube and camera) that the surgeons carefully navigated around the eyesocket.
“I was amazed by the recovery,” Kaviya said in a statement from Leeds. “I was only in the hospital for two days, with no side effects or swelling. I feel perfectly fine now. I am deeply grateful to Mr. Sheikh, Mr. Parmar, and the entire team—they reassured me throughout the process.”
While Kaviya did have to take three months off work to fully recuperate, she has since returned to her job. And the growing use of this emerging technique should improve the surgical treatment of many other patients with similar cases, the doctors say.
“It’s a hard to reach area, and this [surgery] allows a direct access without any compromise of pressure on the brain. So it just reaches us in areas which were once thought to be inoperable, but now are accessible,” Sheikh told The Telegraph.
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