Thane, Maharashtra, India, 6 November 2026: Kaushalya Medical Foundation Trust Hospital performs decompressive craniectomy surgery at its Thane West hospital for patients with dangerous swelling of the brain, as part of a neurosurgery service that also covers craniotomy, burr hole surgery, VP shunting and pituitary tumour surgery.
The brain sits inside a closed skull. After a severe head injury, a large stroke or bleeding inside the head, it can swell, and with nowhere to expand, pressure rises and starts to damage healthy brain tissue. When medicines and other measures cannot bring that pressure down, a neurosurgeon may remove a section of the skull bone to give the brain room. The bone is stored, and is usually replaced in a later operation called cranioplasty once the swelling has settled, often weeks or months afterwards.
The operation is usually done urgently, and the period immediately after it is spent in intensive care under close monitoring. Recovery depends on the original injury far more than on the surgery itself, and families are counselled that rehabilitation can be long.
"By the time we recommend a craniectomy, the family is usually in shock and has very little time to decide," said Dr Survendra Kumar R Rai, Consultant Neurosurgeon, Kaushalya Medical Foundation Trust Hospital. "We tell them plainly what the operation can do, which is buy the brain time, and what it cannot do, which is undo the injury. Then we walk them through every stage, including the second surgery."
The neurosurgery team works alongside the hospital's critical care physicians and its neurology department. Kaushalya accepts cashless treatment through public sector and private insurers and several corporate empanelments. Information on craniectomy surgery and the neurosurgery OPD is available on the hospital website.
About Kaushalya Medical Foundation Trust Hospital
Kaushalya Medical Foundation Trust Hospital is a 150 bed multispecialty tertiary care hospital at Ganeshwadi, Panchpakhadi, Thane West, managed by Kaushalya Medical Foundation, a not for profit trust formed in 1985. The hospital opened in December 2002 and provides surgical, medical, critical care and mother and child services to Thane city and district.