Heaviest tumour removed from heart of 42-year-old man in New Delhi hospital

New Delhi: A 150 gm life threatening tumour,the heaviest recorded so far, was successfully removed from the heart of a 42-year-old man at a hospital in the national capital.

The patient identified as Babu Lal Gupta hailing from Uttar Pradesh was brought to Holy Family Hospital with severe breathing difficulties. An emergency echocardiogram revealed a large (70mm x 40 mm) tumour attached to the right chamber of his heart that was severely restricting blood flow to the lungs.

"The size and position of the tumour could have resulted in the sudden death of the patient and we decided to excise it in an emergency operation," said Dr Mohan Nair, Chief of Holy Family Hospital's cardiac unit.

Nair briefed that on opening the right upper chamber of the heart, the stem of the tumour was found to be attached to the partition of the two upper chambers of the heart. "It was occupying the whole of the right upper chamber and major portion of the right lower chamber and also passing through the tricuspid valve between the two chambers," he said.

"We extracted the tumour from the right lower chamber and finally excised the stem from its attachment to the partition between the chambers called the interatrial septum," said another doctor in the team, adding, "we then closed the
resulting hole in the partition with a synthetic patch". "Gupta made a quick and uneventful recovery and is now preparing to return to his village in Gorakhpur," he said.

Meanwhile, the tumour, weighing 150 grams, the heaviest recorded in the right chamber of the heart, been sent to Holy Family Hospital's pathology department to determine its exact nature. So far, the record for the heaviest tumour of the myxoma type, was held by one removed from a patient at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine, New York and that weighed only 109 grams.

Cardiac tumours are extremely rare. The most common are myxomas with more than 80 per cent of these occurring on the left side of the heart.