Doctors remove 3.5kg tumour from senior citizen’s chest cavity

Pune: Surgeons at a city hospital have operated upon a 70-year-old farmer from Uttar Pradesh and removed a 3.5kg cancerous tumour from his chest cavity.
The farmer was admitted to DY Patil Medical College and Hospital with acute breathing difficulty last month. A slew of tests revealed a giant cancerous tumour had occupied his chest cavity, completely compressing the left lung.
The tumour was attached to the blood vessels of the heart and lungs on the left. Due to the tumour’s size and weight, the function of the heart and lungs was compromised. The surgery on August 24 had lasted for around six hours and the surgeons could remove the 3.5kg tumour by opening the patient’s chest and then separating it from the vital organs.
Solitary fibrous tumours (SFT) are rare growths of soft tissue cells that can form nearly anywhere in the body. They tend to grow slowly and may not cause signs and symptoms until they become very large. “Chemotherapy and radiation have no role in such cases. Surgery was the only option,” the hospital’s chief cancer surgeon, Samir Gupta, said.
The other doctors in the team who performed the challenging surgery along with Gupta on August 24 were cancer surgeons Sanket Banker, Suyash Agrawal and Pankaj Kshirsagar.
The patient had come to his daughter’s house in Pune for treatment. “I would get breathless after walking a few steps. It worsened in the past eight months,” he said. He would also feel light-headed or giddy in the early mornings.
"The tumor occupied at least three-quarters of the left side of the chest causing an extreme shift of windpipe onto the opposite side. Thus, giving anesthesia was a challenge," said the hospital's chief anaesthesiologist Bhavini Shah.
The patient’s post-operative recovery was smooth. “Since surgery is the only treatment for SFT, no further treatment is required. Besides, there is no chance of recurrence as well,” Gupta said. The patient was discharged a week ago and is doing well. “The hospital’s state-of-the-art equipment, specialist doctors have made managing high-risk and complex surgeries possible,” said the hospital's medical superintendent, HH Chavan.