Ravirajan had not eaten a morsel of food for five years. A person who loved to eat, it was like a death sentence, even worse than the fact that he had AIDS, when he realized he could only swallow milk, juice and kanji (gruel).
His food pipe had constricted, allowing nothing but liquids to pass through it, leaving 51-year-old Ravirajan, a clothes merchant from Krishnagiri district, emaciated and po-orly equipped to fight against HIV virus.
“I could not swallow any solid food, and in five years, I underwent at least 30 dilations, a painful procedure where the food pipe is widened and stretched using an endoscope,” recalls Ravirajan.
On Friday, however, he was seen making quick work of a cutlet at Lifeline Multispeciality Hospital, as he became the first HIV positive person in the world to have undergone a successful gullet replacement procedure laproscopically through eight tiny holes in his chest and
belly.
The 6-hour procedure involved the removal of the narrowed part of the man’s food pipe. His stomach was then converted into a tube, pulled up and stitched to his neck, to double up as an esophagus.
“A gullet replacement is a risky surgery and is usually performed by cutting open the chest, slashing open the belly and making a cut in the neck.
Ravirajan would have never survived the blood-loss and infection risk of such an open surgery, but he insisted on it as he
could not bear his liquid diet,” explained gastric surgeon Dr J.S. Rajkumar, who then devised a minimal invasive way to give the man a new food-pipe.
“I am on the last stage of AIDS medication and I also contracted tuberculosis infection because of poor nutrition.
Hopefully, I will put on some weight now, and my CD-4 count will improve,” said Ravirajan who did not shy away from the cameras. “People with AIDS shouldnot be afraid of undergoing surgeries,” he said.
Dr Rajkumar, who has been operating on patients with HIV free of cost since 1997 at his hospital said that as long as all safety guidelines were followed strictly, there was no risk of health staff, or other
patients getting infected.