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60 lb. Tumor Removed from Odessa Woman 1/20/12
Shelley Childers
CBS 7 News
schilders@cbs7.com
January 20, 2012
ODESSA, TX - It's a shocking image of a discovery made by an Odessa doctor after an operation, and you won't believe where it was growing.
It's been weeks since the operation and doctors who were in the room that day are still in shock over what they found, but what may be even more surprising, their patient didn't even know it was growing inside her.
"I've never heard or seen anything like this before," said Dr. Richard Bartlett with Basin Healthcare Centers, where the surgery was performed.
Just three weeks ago an operating room inside the Basin Healthcare Centers was prepped and ready, and a team of doctors and nurses were working to remove an ovarian tumor, little did they know just how large it was going to be.
"I thought that this was a big tumor, but we saw that this was a massive tumor when we started opening. So we were opening and opening and it took an incision from almost up and down her stomach to take out this one," explained Dr. Pill Raja, the operating surgeon.
Turns out the tumor they removed came in right around 60 pounds, the same size of an average 8-year-old boy.
Dr. Raja, with the Permian Women’s Center, says the tumor probably grew over a six to eight month period, which is why their patient didn't notice it.
"She's a 396 pound lady, so she thought she was getting bigger and she never had a clue what big tumor she's carrying."
And just like the medical staff that day, she was blown away by their discovery.
"She was surprised, totally surprised the family couldn't believe it was in there."
Dr. Raja says it was a CAT-scan that uncovered the tumor, performed only after the woman came into the doctor's office complaining of abdominal and stomach pain.
Dr. Bartlett says those are symptoms that should never have been ignored.
"If there's a little problem, little problems do become bigger and bigger in time and this is just an extreme example of that."
Dr. Raja says the tumor was not cancerous, and the patient is recovering well.
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