Aug 18 – Doctors excised a gigantic cyst weighing more than 15 kg from a UK-based woman’s stomach, which she claimed was so large that she appeared pregnant.
Siobhan Foster, 26, began having “excruciating” stomach pain in March 2022, and doctors later discovered a massive 40 cm (about 15.7 inch) cyst carrying 16 litres of fluid on her broad ligament, which contains blood vessels to the ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus, according to the New York Post.
South West News Service broke the story first.
“It was very large, and I struggled with breathing, eating,” Foster was quoted as saying.
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“People were thinking ‘she’s pregnant’,” she added.
Foster’s path to surgery, however, was not smooth.The treatment was postponed for 11 months because she was placed on a waiting list by the UK’s National Health Service, the country’s publicly funded healthcare system.
Foster’s cyst swelled to the size of a toddler, weighing 35 pounds (about 15 kg) over the course of 11 months.
According to the story, she even had to quit her work as a childcare provider since things were too stressful.
Foster finally had laparoscopic surgery to remove the benign cyst in June. Doctors drained 16 litres of fluid from the cyst during the 4.5-hour treatment.
“The cyst was getting into a dangerous place, connecting to my kidney. It was a shock,” she said.
Foster’s size reduced from 24 to 18 after the surgery, and she is now able to live a regular life, according to the report.
Similarly, a 20-year-old woman weighing approximately 230 kg had her enormous ovarian cyst removed during surgery at a facility in Jacksonville, Florida.
