Indian doctors set Guinness record with removal of world's heaviest kidney tumour

Doctors from the Indian financial capital of Mumbai made it to the Guinness Book of World Records a year after they successfully removed the world's heaviest kidney tumour weighing 5.5kg from a woman's body.

"We are thrilled to inform you that your application for heaviest tumour removed has been successful and you are now the Guinness World Record title holder," read the mail from the Guinness Book of World Records to the doctors.

Head of the urology department at the Sion Hospital, Dr Ajit Sawant, who performed the surgery with three of his colleagues on 7 November 2016, received the email last week. Speaking to IBTimes UK, Sawant said it felt good to have one's name in the Guinness Book of World Records for doing something noble.

Manju Devi had come to the hospital with a painful abdominal lump. She had also been passing blood along with urine for three years. The tumour that Sawant and his team removed from her body weighed 50 times more than a healthy kidney. The tumours that he had removed earlier ranged from 500gm to 1kg, he told IBTimes UK.

"These successful cases help people to restore their faith in doctors and hospitals," he said. "We at Sion hospital work for the underprivileged section of the society and would like to serve them in the future also," he added.

Devi could not perform her daily activities because of the huge tumour. The 28-year-old from the eastern Indian district of Darbhanga in Bihar state came to Sion Hospital after being turned down by a number of hospitals, media reports said.

She went through a CT scan that showed that "the tumour had completely taken over the right kidney, compressed the liver and pushed the great vessels (large vein that carries deoxygenated blood from the lower and middle body into the right atrium of the heart), intestines and the pancreas towards the left side of the abdomen", the doctor was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.

After a complete evaluation, Sawant along with doctors Prakash Pawar, Geeta Patkar and Aparna Nerulkar performed the eight-hour surgery and removed the 31cm wide and 19cm long tumour.

Devi was kept on ventilator for a day and within a week, she had recovered completely. She is said to be leading a normal and healthy life now.