09/08/2025
In 2024, a team at the University of Maryland Medical Center successfully performed a groundbreaking surgery to remove a rare spinal tumor—a chordoma—from a 19-year-old woman named Karla Flores, accessing the tumor through her eye socket.
This was the first time a spinal tumor had ever been removed with a transorbital (eye socket) approach, a technique typically reserved for certain brain and sinus tumors.
The surgeons chose this method because other approaches would have posed a much greater risk of paralyzing the patient or damaging vital structures. They carefully navigated through the bottom of her eye socket, avoiding visible incisions on her face. The procedure lasted nearly 19 hours, and the surgical team rebuilt her eye socket with a titanium plate and reconstructed her cheek using bone from her hip. As a result, the surgery saved her life and—remarkably—left her with no facial scars.
Karla Flores’s post-surgery recovery has been positive. Doctors used proton radiation to eliminate any remaining cancer cells, and her latest scans show no evidence of the tumor returning.
