Tumour weighing 13.85kg removed from man’s chest

It occupied over 90% of the chest area

Ateam of doctors at Fortis Memorial Research Institute successfully removed the world’s largest chest tumour weighing 13.85 kgs from the chest of a 25-year-old male patient.

As per the available medical literature and published papers, the largest chest tumour removed till date, before this case, was in Gujarat in 2015 weighing 9.5 kgs, the hospital said yesterday.

The patient, Devesh Sharma, went to Fortis with breathlessness and extreme uneasiness in the chest. He wasn’t able to sleep straight on the bed due to breathing trouble since the last 2-3 months.

An earlier CT scan at another hospital in the city indicated the presence of a massive tumour in the chest. It occupied more than 90 per cent of the chest area, engulfing the heart and displacing both lungs, which led to only 10 per cent of the lungs functioning. In addition, the patient had a very rare blood group, AB negative.

Due to the vast size of the tumour, it could not be removed through minimal invasive surgery. Thus, the Fortis doctors, in a 4-hour long surgery, opened both the sides of the chest and cut the chest bone (sternum) in between.

“In technical terms, we call it clam shell incision. Throughout the procedure, maintaining adequate blood flow was critical … This was a high risk surgery owing to the bulk of the tumour,” said Dr Udgeath Dhir, Director and Head, CTVS, at Fortis, in the statement.