A multidisciplinary team of thoracic surgeons, headed by Prof. Dr. Radoslav Radev, and cardiac surgeons, headed by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Plamen Panayotov, removed a 15-kilogramme tumour from the thoracic cavity of a 39-year-old man at St. Marina University Hospital in Varna. The sophisticated operation took more than six hours.
The patient was hospitalized at the University Hospital in the Clinic of Endocrinology due to extremely low levels of blood sugar and poor overall condition, but the specialists found out that he had effusion in the right side of the chest and a massive tumour formation. The doctors at the Clinic of Thoracic Surgery did numerous tests through which they found out that this was a massive tumour at an advanced stage, located in the right half of the chest. The modern medical equipment available at the hospital provided the opportunity to ascertain a full compression of the lung, upper and lower vena cava, part of the right ventricle and right atrium, and involvement of the pericardium, chest wall and diaphragm. The multidisciplinary medical team prepared the patient for the surgery with medication, also performing preoperative embolization of the blood vessels feeding the tumour. Through performing this minimally invasive non-surgical procedure, the specialists achieved a reduction in the blood supply to the tumour.
Due to the large size of the tumour, the involvement of the pericardium, and the involvement and compression of the heart, and other major venous vessels, the intervention was performed excluding the function of the heart, whose role was substituted by the heart-lung machine.
The doctors at St. Marina University Hospital said that this type of formation is extremely rare in medical practice. Besides the large size, the tumour had a highly developed circulatory system and the size of the blood vessels was about 3 cm in diameter each.
At present the patient is recovering after the complicated intervention, and his health status indicators are improving gradually.
