A 31-year old cloth vendor quite literally had two heads; but finally, the weight has been lifted off him. Nair hospital on Saturday removed a tumour from his brain, weighing 1.873 kg, in a seven-hour surgery.
It may even be the largest brain tumour successfully excised in the world; weight of the tumour in a similar case reported in the past was 1.4 kg.
It was so large that it appeared as if he had two heads mounted on top of each other.
“The patient underwent CT and MR scans of the brain. Specialised CT angiography was performed to study blood supply of the tumour. After the investigation, we decided to perform the surgery [on February 14], which was extremely high-risk,” said Dr Trimurti D Nadkarni, professor and head of neurosurgery, adding that such large tumours are rare and a surgical challenge.
Dr Ramesh Bharmal, dean, said, “This is among the rarest of such cases ever documented in medical history. This kind of a complicated surgery shows that we are well equipped to provide advanced level of treatment to patients.”
11 Units of blood given to patient. The surgery lasted for 7 hours.