Meet the mother-of-three whose brain tumour was removed through her eye socket in a UK first

A mother-of-three has become the first person in the UK to have a brain tumour removed through a hole in her eye socket.

Ruvimbo Kaviya, a nurse in Leeds, has had a tumour called a meningioma taken out from the space beneath the brain and behind the eyes.

Traditionally, this type of tumour would have been considered inoperable because of where is it situated in an area called the cavernous sinus.

And those which have been removed required complex surgery which involves taking off a large part of the skull and moving the brain to access the tumour – which in itself can lead to serious complications including seizures.

Now, surgeons from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust have managed to remove one of these tumours using keyhole surgery through Ms Kaviya’s eye socket – the first surgery of its kind in the UK.

Experts practised the surgery multiple times before the operation – first using 3D models of Ms Kaviya’s head and then in a cadaver lab.

The surgery, known as an endoscopic trans-orbital approach, took just three hours and Ms Kaviya was up and walking about later the same day.

Surgeons first made a small incision next to her eye, used a tiny camera called an endoscope to gently ‘displace’ the eye to one side.

This meant they could reach the back of the eye socket, where a small amount of bone was cut away. 

The tumour was then removed used a flexible tube to bring it back through the tiny hole and incision.

The only evidence of the surgery is a tiny scar left near Ms Kaviya’s left eye.

Surgeons have since performed similar operations, giving hope to UK patients whose cancers were previously seen as inoperable.

Neurosurgeon Mr Asim Sheikh said: ‘There’s been a move towards minimally invasive techniques over the last few years or so, with the advancement of technology, tools, 3D innovation, it is now possible to do the procedures with less morbidity, and that means the patients recover quicker and better.’

He said traditional methods to get to the place where the tumour was situated requires ‘pressing on quite a lot of brain’.

‘So if you press on it too much, or retract it, or try and move it apart, then it can lead to patients having seizures afterwards,’ Mr Sheikh said.

‘Whereas this way, we’re not even sort of touching the brain. It’s a hard to reach area, and this allows a direct access without any compromise of pressure on the brain.’

Ms Kaviya said that she did not even think about being the first UK patient to undergo such a procedure because the tumour was causing such severe headaches.

She was eventually diagnosed with a meningioma in 2023, and the operation was performed in February last year.

The 40-year-old needed three months off work to recover but now she is back at her job providing stroke rehabilitation to patients in Leeds.

‘It was the first time they were doing the procedure,’ she said.

‘I had no option to agree because the pain was just too much – I didn’t even think about it being the first time, all I needed was for it to be removed.’

Ms Kaviya, whose three children are aged eight, 12 and 13, said her family were ‘sceptical’ about the procedure.

‘But I just, I just told them that ‘I just have to do this – it’s either I do it or it, it keeps growing, and maybe I will die’,’ she said.

‘There’s a first time to everything. So you never know, this might be the best chance for me to have it’. And it was.’

Meningiomas are tumours that start in the layers of tissue that cover the brain and spinal cord, and account for around 27 per cent of all brain tumours diagnosed in England.

It is the most common type of benign brain tumour diagnosed in the UK, and are more common in women than in men.

Most meningiomas are not cancerous but can trigger symptoms such as fits, weakness in your arms or legs, loss of eyesight or hearing loss.