A doctor at Changhua Christian Hospital has removed an 8cm parotid gland tumor from a patient, surnamed Park, while minimally damaging facial nerves, a feat Park had been told by doctors in South Korea and the US was impossible.
Park, 47, was diagnosed with a parotid gland tumor nine years ago, which was 2cm in diameter at the time, but he was unable to find time for treatment due to his heavy work load in the US, where he practices law, director of the hospital’s Center for Oral Cancer Chen Mu-kuan (陳穆寬) said.
Park said he was also afraid that he might lose the ability to move parts of his face after surgery, as numerous hospitals and clinics in South Korea and the US told him that the surgery is risky and could sever some facial nerves, causing local paralysis.
Even if the operation did not sever the nerves, it would still damage them, doctors told Park.
Park said he found on the Internet a paper that Chen published, titled Minimally Invasive Endoscope-assisted Parotidectomy: a Different Approach, and sent him an e-mail about his condition.
The two agreed for Park to come to Taiwan for the surgery and on Aug. 11, Chen applied his method to remove the tumor on Park’s parotid gland in an operation that lasted about two hours.
The tumor was almost entirely surrounded by facial nerves, Chen said, adding that such operations had a 90 percent chance of causing permanent paralysis and a 10 percent chance of causing temporary paralysis.
Chen said he was able to minimize the damage to facial nerves by using endoscopic magnification, adding that by undergoing surgery, Park rid himself of a potentially malignant tumor.
Park was released from a recovery room on Aug. 15 and was able to drink tea, chew soft food and even whistle, Chen said, adding that Park has praised Taiwan’s medical system.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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