A Russian man had a hulking tumor the size of his head surgically removed from his neck after more than a decade of using failed home remedies in hopes it would “go away on its own.”
The 65-year-old resident of the city of Kirov lived with the ever-growing tumor, which weighed down on the base of his neck, for a staggering 16 years.
Doctors at the Kirov Regional Clinical Hospital were “amazed” as the patient explained that he’d tried using simple ointments to treat the tumor with zero success.
“Usually, such a tumor grows slowly and painfully, so many patients postpone a visit to a specialist, hoping that the formation will disappear on its own,” Igor Popyrin, head of the surgical department at the hospital, told local outlet Izvestia.
The tumor was identified as a benign lipoma, a fatty lump that typically grows while sandwiched between the skin and a layer of muscle.
Lipomas typically remain doughy and grow between an inch or 2, but can continue to grow and even spiral in some cases, according to the Mayo Clinic.
“If the lipoma grows, then no ointments or folk remedies will help. The only effective treatment is surgical removal,” Popyrin told the outlet.
The Russian man’s tumor was far more precarious than most because of its location near clusters of major blood vessels and nerves — namely, his cervical plexus, which connects to the spinal cord.
The surgery required near-perfect precision.
The doctors tried to draw a line to estimate where the man’s neck should be without the tumor. He had to lay on his side throughout the entire procedure since he couldn’t safely rest on his back.
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