Surgery helps Egyptian woman shed 250 kg in two months
MUMBAI, India — The “world’s heaviest woman” has shed half her weight — around a quarter of a ton — in the two months she’s been in India for treatment, doctors said.
Egyptian national Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty weighed 500 kilograms when she arrived in Mumbai in February on a specially modified plane to undergo emergency weight-loss surgery.
In videos provided this week by the Saifee Hospital, where the 37-year-old successfully had bariatric surgery last month, Abd El Aty can be seen sitting up and smiling while listening to music.
“She looks a happier and slimmer version of her past self. She can finally fit into a wheelchair and sit for a longer period of time, something we never dreamed of three months ago,” said a statement from doctors, announcing that she had lost 250 kg.
Abd El Aty had not left her home in Egypt’s Mediterra- nean port city of Alexandria for two decades until she arrived in India’s commercial capital on Feb 11.
She was put on a special liquid diet to get her weight down to a low enough level for doctors to perform bariatric surgery, essentially a stomachshrinking bypass procedure carried out on those wanting to lose excessive weight.
The diet helped Abd El Aty lose 100 kg i n a month, allowing doctors to operate on her early last month.
Abd El Aty’s family said that as a child she was diagnosed with elephantiasis, a condition that causes the limbs and other body parts to swell, leaving her almost immobile.
The woman has suffered several strokes and faced a series of other serious ailments owing to her weight including diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension and sleep deprivation. She is unable to speak properly and is partially paralyzed.
“She continues to lose weight rapidly and is awaiting the moment she can fit into a CT scan machine to know the cause of her rightsided paralysis and convulsions,” doctors added in the statement on Wednesday.
In July, the Guinness Book of World Records recorded US citizen Pauline Potter as the world’s heaviest woman at 293 kg, well above Abd El Aty’s current weight.
She can finally fit into a wheelchair ... something we never dreamed of three months ago.” Dctors at Saifee Hospital, in a statement