Cuttack, Nov. 18: Bandana Kar, 25, a homemaker from East Midnapur in Bengal, can now afford to smile as doctors at SCB Medical College and Hospital here have successfully removed a stone from her pancreas gland through laparoscopic surgery.

“We went to a number of hospitals for treatment. But none of the doctors were able to diagnose my problem. Finally, we came to the SCB. The doctors here provided us with all kinds of assistance,” said Bandana’s husband Gauranga Kar, a tailor by profession.

Gauranga said the doctors at a private nursing home in Bengal had advised them to take his wife to Hyderabad for treatment. But he could not afford that because of financial constraints.

In October, he took his wife to SCB. “The doctors here asked my wife to undergo certain tests and she was admitted to SCB’s surgery department on November 2,” he said.

This is for the second time that the doctors at SCB have successfully conducted a laparoscopic surgery. Experts believe the success of laparoscopic surgery will help poor patients who otherwise migrate to other parts of the country for availing such kind of treatment. The procedure for conducting a general non-laparoscopic surgery is usually very excruciating for patients as an incision of 25 to 30cm in the abdomen is made to perform the operation.

“But, in laparoscopic surgery, only an incision of 5mm is made. This is a far less painful surgical method than the old one,” said SCB’s associate professor Dr Manas Ranjan Sahu.

Sahu the patient had developed a 10-cm stone in her pancreas. As the laparoscopic surgery is complicated, it is still not done in other parts of the state.

Now, with the success of the laparoscopic surgery at SCB, a patient will have just to spend around Rs 30,000 to 35,000 for the treatment here, which usually costs around one lakh in Hyderabad and Coimbatore.

It took a team of three doctors, led by Dr Manas Sahu and two of his associates, around six hours to conduct the operation successfully.

The pancreas is a six-inch gland located between the spine and stomach and is surrounded by the intestine and liver.

Chronic pancreatitis, associated with gallbladder disease and alcoholism, can cause painful attacks over a number of years and lead to other problems such as pancreatic insufficiency, bacterial infection and type 2 diabetes.