President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was discharged from the Austral hospital undergoing a surgery to remove her thyroid gland. But the surprising good news is that the medical report ruled out the presence of cancer cells, as it had been previously announced.
“The definitive histopathologic tests confirmed the presence of nodules in both sides of the thyroid gland, but ruled out the presence of cancer cells, tus modifying the initial diagnosis,” the statement released jointly by the Austral Hospital and the Presidential doctors.
Ambito.com spoke to doctor Mario Burno, former chief of Oncology of the Alvarez hospital, assured that “this doesn’t happen frequently, it usually works the other way round. A tumour is believed to be benign and then turn out to be malign. Although there is always a margin for errors, of around 5 percent in these cases, because the extracted material is made up of isolated cells.”
“The surgery is performed based on the previous diagnosis, and when nodules are found on both lobules of the gland, doctors procedeed to remove the thyroid gland in it’s entirety. Then, as the routine exam was completed, the presence of cancer cells was ruled out,” Burno added.
“Had the previous test shown the lack of cancer cells, a medical treatment would still have been necessary, but the surgery wouldn’t,” the specialist stressed.
The medical report released today stated that “according to this favourable diagnosis, the medical team considered that the applied treatment is enough, and the radioactive iodine treatment won’t be necessary.”
Taking into account the released information, Burno deemed that no further treatment be necessary, the recovery should be like the one needed after a intermediate level surgery, thus in less than twenty days the President could resume her normal activities,” Burno added.
The official medical report highlighted that during the last few hours of her hospitalization President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner rested normally and is in very good general state,” although it did not indicate any changes on the time period of her recovery. The Head of State’s leave of absence ends January 24th and Vice-President Amado Boudou is acting as President meanwhile.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald