Delhi: Man gets a ‘bigger than tennis ball’ cyst removed

Doctors at a city-based hospital removed a cyst, which was around 1.5 times the size of a tennis ball, from the left abdomen of a 28-year-old man while managing to salvage his leg.

Majid Nazir was suffering from symptoms such as persistent pain in his left leg and could not walk for more than a few metres without strain, associate director and head of GI surgical oncology at the Max Super Speciality Hospital in Shalimar Bagh, Rudra Prasad Acharya,said.

He was asked to undergo an MRI, and the scan revealed an unidentified pelvic mass, he said.

Another CT scan and angiography revealed a big fluid-filled cystic mass of 10 cm by 8 cm in his left abdomen, the doctor said.

“The cyst had begun to press against his left femoral artery (present in the left thigh) and had led to a very feeble pulse. In fact, from the scans, it seemed the cyst had replaced his artery function and led to a decreased blood flow. “The patient was in grave danger of losing a limb due to the restricted blood flow,” he said.

Dr Dinesh Kumar Mittal, senior consultant at the hospital, said the cyst had been growing undetected in the patient’s body for nearly six years and was full of “multiple daughter cysts”.

The daughter cysts were removed by a multi-disciplinary team of oncologists and cardiologists from inside the Iliac artery that supplies blood to the lower limbs.

Then, an artificial vessel was created through a vascular graft to replace the iliac artery and re-establish circulation between the Aorta, the largest artery in the body, and left femoral artery in the thigh.

“This ensured that regular supply of blood is maintained to the patient’s limb, saving him from a potential loss of left leg. Regular follow-ups ensured that the chances of recurrence are minimised,” Acharya said.
The surgery took place on May 18.

“When we began operating on Nazir, we realised that the cyst had grown into the lumen of the artery putting the patient at grave risk of extensive blockages.

HYDATID CYST

• It is one of the oldest and most persistent public healthcare problems across the world 
   
• Rural regions of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir have seen the highest incidence of such cysts
   
• It is spread by eating food items which have somehow been infected by animal faeces