This Indian man’s record-size brain tumour was so big it ‘sat like a head on top of another head’
‘The sheer size of the tumour was a challenge, and we had to ensure blood pressure was maintained while surgery was on’
For the past several years, Santlal Pal had been watching the tumour emerge from his skull.
Doctors in India say Pal’s brain tumour grew so big that it weighed nearly four pounds and measured nearly 20cm by 30cm by 30cm, according to local news reports.
It may have been the largest brain tumour in the world. But now it is gone: Doctors successfully removed the mass during an intensive, six-hour operation on Valentine’s Day.
Trimurti Nadkarni, head of the neurosurgery department at Nair Hospital in Mumbai, told the Indian Express that the tumour “sat like a head on top of another head.” Surgeons “had to cut through the bone,” Nadkarni said. “The sheer size of the tumour was a challenge, and we had to ensure blood pressure was maintained while surgery was on.”
More than a week after the surgery, Nadkarni told BBC News that Pal, a 31-year-old shopkeeper in the state of Uttar Pradesh, is “out of danger. Now it’s a matter of recovery.”