Doctors remove 51-pound tumour from New Jersey woman

New Jersey surgeons removed a rapidly growing, 51-pound (23-kg) cancerous tumour from a 65 year old woman (Evelyn), who had delayed treatment for more than a month until she became eligible for health insurance, her doctor said on Tuesday. Dr. David Dupree,led the surgery at Riverview Medical Centre in Red Bank, New Jersey.

Evelyn noticed discomfort in her abdomen and that her normally 120-pound frame was rapidly ballooning. Dupree said she sought medical help on June 4, just days after her 65th birthday, when she would qualify for Medicare, the U.S. healthcare program for seniors.

He said."The reason she didn't go earlier was because she had no insurance," She weighed more than 170 pounds, her legs were swollen with trapped blood, she was badly dehydrated, and, scans showed, the tumour - a malignant sarcoma - was crushing her inferior vena cava, one of the main veins returning blood to the heart, and putting her life in danger. See image of tumour (Graphic Image Warning)

 
With her body too weakened to be operated on immediately, Dupree scheduled surgery for the following Monday, allowing time for her to become rehydrated and for her blood pressure to be brought under control.

But after she became short of breath on Sunday evening, Dupree brought the surgery forward. "I knew that she wasn't going to make it through the night," he said. "Either she goes now or she dies tonight," he recalled thinking.

Opening her up, Dupree and his team found the tumour, which appeared to have originated out of the fatty tissue around her large intestine, had engulfed many of her internal organs, and had to be sliced away "millimetre by millimetre" over the course of the five-hour surgery.

Evelyn was still recovering from the operation in a rehabilitation Center on Tuesday.

Source: NEW YORK (Reuters)