Mumbai, Aug 11 (IANS): In a rare surgery, a team of doctors at Sion Hospital here removed a tumour weighing over 2.50 kg during an emergency caesarean operation on a 26-year-old pregnant woman, a team member said Monday.
Though the surgery was performed almost two months ago, the doctors chose to announce their achievement only now as they were waiting for the patient to recover completely.
The tumour -- the size of a watermelon -- had remained undetected till the woman was brought to the Lokmanya Tilak Memorial General Hospital (LTMGH), or Sion Hospital, run by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.
"This is the first case in the country in which such a huge ovarian tumour has been removed during an emergency caesarian section operation," Dr. Niranjan Chavan, professor in LTMGH department of obstetrics & gynaecology, told IANS.
The woman - a domestic help from Vikhroli suburb - was in labour with a high pulse rate when she was brought to Sion Hospital June 15 from a private nursing home. She was immediately taken to the operation theatre.
After a caesarian section operation, the doctors delivered a boy weighing 2.7 kgs.
Post-delivery, as the team was performing the cleaning sequence of the paracolic sections, they were shocked to detect a huge tumour in the woman's abdomen.
"We had checked her medical records which only stated that she had already undergone two caesarian section procedures in the past, but nowhere was it mentioned that she had an ovarian tumour," Chavan said.
Terming it as "an unfortunate development," Chavan and his team finally removed the huge tumour, punctured it and drained one litre fluids from it.
They also managed to save the left ovary of the patient.
Later, they carried out a tubal ligation (sterilization) on the couple as per their request.
Head of the department Dr. Y. S. Nandanwar and Sion Hospital dean Avinash Supe, while congratulating the medical team, said this was the first case reported in India where such a large ovarian tumour was excised during emergency caesarean section operation.
The histopathology report of the Vikhroli woman, who has two sons, six and three years old, suggests that the tumour was benign and she would be able to lead a normal healthy life.