‘Never Seen Before’: ‘Shocked’ Indian Doctors Remove 2.7 Kg of Breast Tissue from UAE Woman

Gigantomastia is a rare disorder where breasts grow excessively big, with only a couple of hundred of cases reported in medical literature. The condition occurs spontaneously due to “overtly sensitive tissues or hormones” or as a post-pregnancy complication. Afflicted women feel as if they are carrying a huge burden on their chest.

Doctors at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital have successfully carried out a breast reduction surgery on a woman from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), saying that they had “never seen” such large breasts in the last 40 years.

According to a hospital statement shared with Sputnik, the 60-year-old woman had been suffering from an extreme case of Gigantomastia: the condition of having breasts of abnormal sizes.

During the medical procedure, the doctors removed 1.3 kg of the breast tissue from the left side and around 1.4 kg from the right side, as per the statement. Overall, around 2.7 kg of tissue was removed around the woman’s breasts.

Patient with gigantomastia

© Sputnik

Dr. Rajeev B. Ahuja, a senior consultant at the hospital’s Department of Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery, pointed out that the woman’s breasts reached “two inches below the navel”.

"In my last 40 years of experience I have seen many huge breasts but this patient had the largest breasts, the size of which I had never seen before, and which were the root cause of all her symptoms, leading to an extremely poor quality of life," said Dr. Ahuja.

The Indian doctor further noted that the woman had been suffering from “severe backache, pain in neck, difficulty in walking, excessive pressure on the shoulder due to bra straps and rashes (Intertrigo) underneath her breasts.

“She was leading a miserable life for the last 30 years,” said the doctor. “The surgery was challenging and lasted five and a half hours".

Dr. Ahuja. shared that the doctors had decided not to follow the conventional medical procedure usually followed while operating on women with Gigantomastia.

“In most of these cases the standard surgery is to do a partial amputation of the breast with free nipple grafting, which is not aesthetically pleasing, even if it reduces the load on the chest,” Dr. Ahuja underlined.

In this case, however, the operating doctors decided to go for a medical procedure known as “breast reduction by a standard technique”. They explained that the technique is employed for surgeries involving “large breasts” but it is usually “not recommended” for Gigantomastia.

Explaining the decision, Dr. Ahuja said that following the conventional procedure (involving partial amputation of the breast) could have led to other medical complications in the woman, including “discoloration of the nipple”.

The hospital said that the patient was discharged three days after the surgery and the stitches were removed after two weeks.

“She is now wearing a cup size C/D bra without any discomfort and living a pain free happy life,” added Dr. Ahuja, while also noting that the cost incurred by the woman was almost a fifth of what she was being quoted at hospitals back in the UAE.