For over five years, William Abraham was in constant pain. It was so excruciating, he would take leave from his job as a computer operator and stay at home for a couple of days.

Today, eight months after his surgery for chronic calcific pancreatitis at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (GH), Mr. Abraham, 34, has no pain.

His surgery was a combination of two procedures. The delineation of the procedures, as a research paper, won GH’s Institute of Surgical Gastroenterology the ‘Best Free Paper’ award at the Asia Pacific Hepato Biliary Pancreatic Conference held in Singapore, recently.

“Chronic calcific pancreatitis is a condition in which stones develop in the pancreas,” said S.M. Chandramohan, head of the institute.

This could happen to people living in the tropics, or due to alcohol usage, or unknown factors too. Frey’s procedure was a surgery performed on these patients to remove the stones. But the problem was, pain recurred in up to 20 per cent of patients after the surgery,” he said. “One of the reasons for pain after surgery was the irritation of the nerves. Once they were de-sensitised, there was no pain,” said D. Kannan, professor at the institute.

A study performed by the institute between January 2013 and July 2014, when 66 patients were operated on for this condition, showed that with the injection of alcohol, or celiac plexus neurolysis, 97 per cent of patients did not suffer from pain, post the surgery.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Chennai – April 03rd, 2015