Doctors have given an Indian farmer a new lease of life after removing a massive tumor from his neck.
Somai, 55, ignored the tumor for 20 years, thinking it was just a swollen thyroid gland, until it grew to be about the same size as the rest of his head.
Doctors removed the non-cancerous tumor, which weighed a massive 1.4 kg, or roughly three pints of milk.
Surgeons performed a three-and-a-half-hour operation on Somai’s neck to remove the growth, and now he can move his head without pain for the first time in years.
One of the doctors at King George’s Medical Hospital in Lucknow, about 300 miles south-east of New Delhi, said a tumor that size was ‘quite rare’.
Somai, a resident of Basti in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, is recuperating in the hospital and will return home in the upcoming days. He visited doctors when the growth became too painful for him to bear, and scans revealed it was a sub-mandibular tumor, meaning it began in his salivary gland.
Like Somai’s, about half of the tumors there are benign and not cancerous, and many are curable through surgery.
The surgery was a success, and Somai, who did not want to reveal his surname, can now move his head without pain for the first time in years.
Dr. Onkar Vedak, who was part of the surgical team at King George’s Medical University Hospital, said: ‘[Somai] visited our outpatients’ department on July 12, and we admitted him.
‘Challenging’ surgery took three and a half hours.
We decided to remove the growth as soon as possible after reviewing the scan reports, and we performed the surgery the following day, on July 13.
‘The surgery was quite challenging and took about three and a half hours.
‘It was a sub-mandibular tumor that was pressing hard on the carotid arteries, which are major blood vessels in the neck that supply blood to the brain, neck, and face.’
Half of sub-mandibular tumors are not cancerous.
The carotid arteries are vital blood vessels, and they are the ones in which you can feel your pulse when you put your finger to your neck. Somai’s tumor grew out of a salivary gland, of which there are three along the jaw line.
Tumors in the submandibular glands tend to be smaller and are located just below the jaw. Between 10 and 20 percent of salivary gland tumors start here, and around half of them are cancerous.
‘The sub-mandibular glands are below the jaw,’ Dr. Vedak added. ‘They secrete saliva under the tongue.
If the tumorous nodules were small, the operation would have been straightforward, but Somai was carrying a large lump. The tumor weighed 1.4 kilograms after the operation, which is extremely unusual.
‘The patient is recuperating post-surgery and will be discharged after his stitches are removed.’
Chief surgeon Dr. Sunil Kumar performed the surgery with assistance from Drs. Onkar Vedak, Priyanka Shrivastava, Krishna Choubey, Ampu Hage, and anesthetist Dr. Ehsan Siddique.
Source:; www.dailymail.co.uk