M S Ramaiah Narayana Heart Centre, Bengaluru has removed a tumour weighing 3.2 kilograms from a teenage girl. The tumour was located in the middle of her chest compressing one side of her lungs and the heart causing deformity of the chest wall.

The patient suffered with this for almost six years from the age of 10. Now 16 years, year-old breathes easy with a lot of respite. The surgical intervention spanning five hours was performed by Dr Jayanta Kumar Das, consultant cardiovascular & thoracic surgeon and his team comprising of Dr Shilpa Rudradevaru, Dr Anil Kumar and Dr Ravi Naik at M S Ramaiah Narayana Heart Centre in Bengaluru.

Stating this as a very rare case, Dr Jayanta said, that the patient was diagnosed with Mediastinal Teratom – a Mediastinal tumour, wherein Mediastinal is the cavity that separates the lungs from the rest of the chest. The CT scan showed a huge tumour occupying the right lung, right plural cavity pushing the heart further to the left.

“This was a complicated high-risk case and requires skill and precision to perform such a surgery in the thorax region to remove the tumour located between the heart and the lung. The condition manifests from the Pluripotent or embryonic cell trapped during developmental stages,” he added.

In such cases there is no alternative treatment except surgery. Such kind of tumour resection was done using Cardio Pulmonary Bypass machine in M S Ramaiah Narayana Heart Centre. “In this case also we had kept this as a back-up option”, Dr Jayata said.

Since the patient from an economically backward family in West Bengal, the parents of the patient was scouting for hospitals across the country that was willing to treat this case The team at M S Ramaiah Narayana Heart Centre not only accepted the high-risk case willingly, but also helped the family in giving a concession in the cost of the treatment as they could afford only some portion of the cost of the treatment, said Dr Jayata.

Narayana Health’s chain of 7 network hospitals in the city are located at Bommasandra, HSR Layout, Whitefield, Indiranagar, Nrupthunga Road, and Mattikere. Its heart network in Bengaluru comprises of 11 cath labs across and 134 cardiologists and cardiac surgeons with the best emergency specialists working round the clock.