Doctors in UAE take out 3.5kg cancer tumour from woman’s belly

Abu Dhabi - She lost her appetite; had bouts of diarrhoea; and began experiencing rapid weight loss, fatigue, and excessive bloating.

A 50-year-old woman who had been carrying a massive cancerous tumour in her abdomen was “weeks away from death” when doctors in Abu Dhabi saw her condition. The specialists managed to remove the 3.5kg growing tumour just in time to save her life.

With the tumour that made her look pregnant, the woman was not able to get help from several hospitals because of the size of the mass and the complexity of her condition. Then, finally, she was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi (CCAD). At that time, she had already been suffering pain for seven months.

The patient began experiencing symptoms almost a year ago. She lost her appetite; had bouts of diarrhoea; and began experiencing rapid weight loss, fatigue, and excessive bloating.

“My life had changed completely. I could not sleep and felt uncomfortable all the time. It was debilitating,” she said, adding that the tumour caused an unnatural bulge in her abdomen, making it difficult for her to sleep or carry out daily chores.

A biopsy report confirmed that she had pancreatic adenocarcinoma, a cancer that starts in the ducts of the pancreas.

Elaborating on the case, Dr Naveed Ahmed, a surgeon at the digestive disease institute at CCAD, said: “She was quite weak when she arrived at the hospital and her stomach had expanded to an extent that she felt pregnant. This is because the large mass kept growing inside the abdomen and was intimately attached to the major vessels supplying the abdomen, liver and intestine.

“Another two to three months without treatment and it would have been too late.”

Doctors at the hospital performed a near-total pancreatectomy, in which a large incision was made in the abdomen to remove a big part of the pancreas.

“The size did pose a challenge and we had to alter our usual technique of resection to preserve the main vessels that supply the gut. We then removed the cancer completely and reconstructed the vessels around the pancreas,” said Dr Ahmed.

The patient is now undergoing chemotherapy and will require follow-up medical checks for monitoring.

saman@khaleejtimes.com

• Abu Dhabi