A NINE-YEAR-OLD from Coventry who braved a 13-hour operation for a benign brain tumour last year is urging people to donate to Birmingham Children’s Hospital charity (BCHC) as it attempts to introduce life-changing surgery equipment.
Cian Fitzgerald is backing BCHC’s appeal to help bring an intraoperative MRI (iMRI) scanner to the hospital, which will help transform life-changing brain tumour and epilepsy surgery.
The hospital is still the only paediatric neurosurgical centre in the UK without an iMRI scanner and it has launched an appeal to raise £1.5million to introduce the service.
The iMRI technology allows the scanner to be moved directly to the patient on an operating table, so surgeons can obtain ‘live’ information about the tumour’s position.
After suddenly starting to experience ‘fuzzy’ headaches, confusion and vacant seizures, Cian’s parents, Louise and Paddy, were shocked to learn he had a benign brain tumour.
He was referred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital and underwent a gruelling 13-hour operation, which could have lasted less than half as long if they had access to the iMRI scanner.
During his operation, surgeons wanted to check the tumour in Cian’s brain had been successfully removed, so he was taken down to the hospital’s current MRI suite while still under general anaesthetic. There it was determined he needed to return to surgery.
Paddy said: “Our son’s surgery was the longest day of our lives – we tried to keep ourselves busy, but it was as if the clocks had stopped and the longer it went on, the more anxious we felt.
“We just wanted to know he was awake and okay.
“That second wait was the hardest, but after an additional five hours in theatre, all the tumour was removed, and Cian was brought back to the ward, where he continued to recover.”
Mum Louise said this technology could help surgeons while reducing the stress families like her own had to go through.
Visit bch.org.uk/iMRI to donate or for more information.
