An unprecedented operation, due to the size of the tumor, was performed at the Irccs Policlinico Sant’Orsola in Bologna. A 52-year-old patient from Sardinia had a mass weighing more than 30 kg and 65 cm in diameter; it was a retroperitoneal lipo-sarcoma arising from the soft tissue of the right kidney, a rare tumor, the largest in Europe of this type ever described in the literature. Thanks to the absence of metastases, the very complex operation, which involved a multidisciplinary team, was curative and radical: the mass was operated on, avoiding ostomies and dialysis.
The man had already been followed in Sardinia for another thoracic pathology, a tumor of the thymus, but during the analyzes a completely asymptomatic mass in the abdomen was also discovered, which had grown exponentially in a few months. Thus, the oncologist who is treating him has decided to send him to Italian centers more specialized in these pathologies.
Sant’Orsola of Bologna was the only one to confirm their availability for the operation. “When the patient’s case and his diagnostic tests were told to us, we were impressed – comments prof. Matteo Cescon, director of the hepatobiliary surgery and transplantation unit of the Irccs Policlinico Sant’Orsola – I’ve never seen anything like this. We knew that other centers in Italy had not given their willingness to operate, despite this we wanted to try”.
The patient was in conditions of great discomfort especially in his movements; he remained at Sant’Orsola for almost two months with a demanding post-operative course: during the operation it was possible to remove the right kidney and half of the right colon together with the appendix, at the same time the intestine was reconstructed. He returned home a few weeks ago, in the province of Cagliari, and will soon return to Bologna to also be operated on for thymus cancer.
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