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Photo by Reed Hutchinson
UCLA Photographic Services
Neurosurgeon John Frazee (left) demonstrates to patient
Paul Santos how an endoscope will be used to remove a cyst
from his brain. |
back on track
Surgeon restores a future pilot's dream
by judy lin
ucla today
All his life, Paul Santos has dreamed of flying. During his childhood
in Guam, he plastered his bedroom walls with posters of fighter
planes. When he turned 18, he signed on with the Navy, with his
eye on the sky.
John Frazee also dreamed of becoming a pilot. But his less-than-20/20
vision scuttled that plan, and he enrolled in medical school instead.
Santos, now 23, is stationed at Point Mugu Naval Air Station, where
he serves as a radar operator, flying directly behind the pilot.
He spent three months in Iraq on reconnaissance missions. Upon his
return home, he enrolled in flight training at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, which has a branch at his air base.
And Frazee is now clinical professor of neurosurgery and director
of UCLA’s Neuroendoscopy Program.
Last spring, the two men crossed paths when Santos found that
a medical condition that first surfaced as a headache might ground
him as a flier.
“I was having pain on the left side of my head,” the
radar operator recalled. “I thought maybe it was a stress
thing. Then I woke up one morning with a band of pain running across
my head temple-to-temple.”
When his vision starting blurring, he headed to his Navy doctor
and learned that an arachnoid — spiderlike — cyst was
spreading a web across his brain behind his left eye. The doctor
recommended a craniotomy, the standard procedure for removal of
a cyst: A hole the size of a grapefruit would be bored into his
skull, the cyst removed, the site covered with a metal plate —
and Santos would never be able to fly again. “My heart just
dropped,” he recalled. “But still, I never told myself
I wasn’t going to fly.”
That’s when a friend referred him to Frazee, who specializes
in endoscopic brain surgery. Using a tube-like device with a tiny
camera guided by a light and incorporating miniscule surgical tools,
endoscopy allows the entire procedure to be done through a small
incision. And Frazee had developed a technologically advanced endoscope
that is guided by a computer precisely to the surgical site, an
approach similar to global positioning navigational systems in automobiles.
“Paul was a perfect candidate for this device,” said
Frazee, noting that the cyst’s location could be easily reached
with the endoscope. Although he had used it in actual surgery only
five times, and never before on an arachnoid cyst, Frazee felt confident
the surgery would be very successful. The procedure would require
an incision the size of a dime, thus no metal plate would be needed,
and recovery would be quick and complete.
Surgery took place on Sept. 1. “We are good to go, doc,”
Santos told Frazee before rolling into the OR, giving the doctor
a pilot’s thumbs-up. The procedure took only three hours,
in contrast to a seven-to-nine-hour craniotomy. Two days later,
Santos headed home, and he is already back at work, though on the
ground for the time being. Follow-up visits show him recovering
beautifully.
“I’ve told him he can hop on a plane again as soon
as he wants to,” Frazee said. Santos’ Navy superiors
are holding him back just a little longer until it’s clear
he is 100% recovered.
“I can’t wait,” said Santos. “I’m
a flyboy. I need to be up flying. To me, it’s the best job.”
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