A team of 20 doctors with Dr. Vaagn Andikyan, as the lead surgeon successfully operated on a 132-pound ovarian tumor from a woman's abdomen at Connecticut's Danbury Hospital, USA.
The woman's identity was not disclosed but she reported that the tumor began growing at a rate of about 10 pounds per week since November. A CT scan showed that she had a large mass on her ovary.
The woman was 38 years old, extremely malnourished and was confined to a wheelchair because of the weight of the tumor.
Dr. Andikyan, who is a gynecologic oncologist for Western Connecticut Health Network said, "During the surgery, we removed this gigantic tumor that originated from her left ovary. We removed her left ovary, her left (fallopian) tube, and we removed the affected peritoneal tissue that was adhering to the ovary."
The tumor was confirmed to be benign mucinous cystadenoma during a histopathological examination. Mucinous tumors comprise 15% of all ovarian tumors and are known to grow to very large size.
“She had gotten to the point where she slept in a chair because she couldn’t lie flat, and the first thing we were going to need to do after we got her to sleep was to lie her flat for the operation,” said Dr. Karl Kulikowski, vice chairman, of the anesthesia department at Danbury Hospital. “Would her body tolerate that?”
“The huge weight of the tumor made anesthesia really dangerous,” said Dr. David Goldenberg, section chief of plastic surgery. “All of a sudden you are going to reduce that weight in a flash, and the cardiac system has to adjust very quickly, so there was a tremendous amount of preparation done beforehand to anticipate that kind of a problem.”
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| Dr David Goldenberg, left, Dr Karl Kulikowski and Dr Vaagn Andikyan, right, in a Danbury Hospital operating room. |
The team was prepared to perform open heart surgery in case of an emergency, but the pre-op planning and preparation were successful, and the tumor removal was uneventful.
The surgeons also removed 6 pounds of the excess abdominal wall and performed a reconstructive surgery afterward during the same surgery. The woman was discharged after 2 weeks and has recovered well.
The world’s largest ovarian tumor to be removed was 300 pounds from an unnamed 34-year-old woman’s abdomen in Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California on October 1991.
Congratulations,perfect surgical team
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