132-pound tumor removed from woman's abdomen

DANBURY, Conn. — Doctors at a Connecticut hospital say they removed a 132-pound tumor from a woman's abdomen, and she is expected to recover fully. The ovarian tumor was diagnosed after the 38-year-old woman reported rapid weight gain of about 10 pounds per week over a two-month period.

"I might expect to see a 25-pound ovarian tumor, but a 132-pound tumor is very rare," the woman's doctor, Vaagn Andikyan, M.D., a gynecologic oncologist, said in a statement. "When I met the patient, she was extremely malnourished because the tumor was sitting on her digestive tract, and she used a wheelchair because of the tumor's weight."

The doctors at Danbury Hospital announced Thursday that the five-hour surgery was completed successfully after extensive planning by a team of 25 clinical specialists. The physicians also removed the woman's left ovary removed excess skin that was stretched by the tumor and reconstructed the patient's abdomen.

The tumor was benign, but because it was sitting on a major blood vessel doctors say they were concerned about the patient's heart. 

Pathologists have been conducting genetic tests on the tumor to learn why it grew so quickly.