A patient presented to a medical office in Italy complaining of recent weight gain, about 40 kilograms over 10 months, and abdominal pain. These symptoms usually indicate pregnancy, unless the patient is 62 years old.
Apart from abdominal pain, enlarged abdomen and some shortness of breath, the woman had no other symptoms and all tests were normal.
Doctors decided to perform an exploratory operation to see what exactly was inside the woman’s stomach. When they opened it, they found a 39-kilogram tumor, which they described in a recent study. The one inside.
Surgery revealed a rare tumor the weight of four large watermelons
The tumor was a mucinous ovarian carcinoma, a rare type of ovarian cancer characterized by fluid-filled, mucus-covered cancer cells from the patient’s left ovary. Approximately 2-3% of ovarian cancer diagnoses are cervical cancer.
Doctors were able to remove the tumor in one piece, which is important for fluid-filled tumors. According to a 2019 study, spilling their contents during surgery increases the risk of disease recurrence.
The lump was 50 centimeters long and weighed 49 kilograms – as big and heavy as four large watermelons.
Mucinous tumors tend to grow larger, so they can be detected earlier than other types of ovarian cancer, according to the University of Chicago Southern Cancer Center.
Fortunately, patients diagnosed with stage I mucinous ovarian cancer have a high survival rate if the tumor is completely removed.
The Italian patient recovered well after the operation and was discharged from the hospital five days later, his doctors said. 6 months after surgery, he was asymptomatic and had no cancer markers in his blood.
Ovarian tumors are dangerous regardless of size
Large ovarian tumors have also been reported in the medical literature. In 2018, doctors removed a 60-pound mass from a 38-year-old Connecticut woman. Her tumor was not cancerous, but it had grown and affected her digestion.
But the size of the tumor has nothing to do with how dangerous it is. In fact, the Italian woman’s mucous tumors are benign in about 80% of cases, cancerous in 10% and malignant in the remaining 10%.
Small uterine masses can also cause death. It is estimated that 13,270 women in the United States will die from ovarian cancer this year.
Publisher: DC
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