Doctors remove giant malignant tumour weighing 22 kg

LONDON - Surgeons have removed a giant tumour weighing 22 kg from a woman, which had been growing inside her body for 18 months.

The huge growth was taken out of the 54-year-old’s womb during a four-hour operation at a hospital near Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Surgeons believe the malignant tumour is one of the biggest ever removed in the world. Malignant tumours of this type usually weigh between two and three kg, reports the Daily Mail.

Lead surgeon Oscar Lopez said: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my 34 years of medical service.”

“In medical literature a giant tumour is one that weighs more than 8.8lbs (4.3 kg). But we’ve not found any references to a larger tumour.”

“Its weight is comparable to that of a four-year-old boy’s. In layman’s terms, it was as if this woman had been pregnant with quintuplets.”

The woman, who comes from the town of Lomas de Zamora on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, had suffered constant abdominal growth for the past 18 months.

She had trouble performing everyday tasks like walking and bending down to tie up her shoe laces.

She was referred to Gandulfo Hospital, where surgeons operated on her, from another medical centre.

A team of specialists performed a laparotomy on the woman. This meant they cut through her abdominal wall before separating her intestines and bladder and removing her uterus, ovaries and the tumour.

The woman is now back at home after being kept in hospital for five days following the operation.