PUNE: A 50-year-old woman from Bhosari, who used to complain of mild pain and swelling in her abdomen, used to get tired very often. Later, one of her relatives noticed that her abdomen was looking abnormally distended. She immediately consulted the doctors. She was later diagnosed with an ovarian mass, which was filling her abdomen from all sides extending up to the lungs. She underwent surgery, in which the 10.5-kg uterine tumour was removed at a city-based hospital.
The woman patient had no complaints of diabetes, blood pressure, menstrual cycle or any other medical history. An initial MRI revealed the ovarian mass.
Due to the serious nature of the mass, the patient was immediately referred to Dr Nikhil Parwate, gynaecologist, surgical oncologist at the Aditya Birla Memorial Hospital.
Dr Parwate said that the patient was admitted under severe pain. “Her abdomen was so huge that it measured around 39 cm on tape. The MRI suggested an ovarian mass but on clinical examination, I thought it was uterine. This was confirmed when the patient’s abdomen was opened. We saw the mass was arising from the lateral wall of the uterus. It was confirmed by an on-table pathological examination, medically called as Frozen Section,” said Dr Parwate.
He added that the team started the surgery by giving a very big vertical incision or cut on the stomach to get the mass out. “We carefully dissected to separate the mass without any injury to the ureter, small and large intestine. It was very tough to get that mass out. Hence, we tied every small blood vessels that came our way to prevent haemorrhage or localised bleeding. The mass weighed 10.5 kg but the challenging part was to hold such a mass and operate without injury to any other organ,” added Dr Parwate. He said the mass carried around 1.5 litres of blood. So, two bottles of blood were transfused.
“Our anaesthesia team did necessary pre-operative things, including placing a central line, as we anticipated massive blood loss. The patient’s blood group was ‘A’ negative, which is very rare. We managed to get it in our blood bank before the surgery itself,” said Dr Parwate.
The anatomy of the patient’s reproductive track was completely distorted by the mass but it was slowly restored. The surgery lasted for about five hours. The patient was discharged on the fourth day after her surgery.
The teams of doctors included gastrointestinal surgeon Dr Prakash Valse and the anaesthesia team was led by Dr Ashish Pathak while blood bank in-charge Dr Ravindra Singh took care of the required blood.