Doctors have successfully removed a 2.75 kg fibroid from the uterus of a 36-year-old woman at a civic-run hospital in Mumbai.
 

The woman was operated at Cooper Hospital in suburban Juhu (Mumbai) late last month after being admitted with a lump in abdomen and pain, a senior doctor said on April 9. "The patient visited our OPD on March 18 with complaints of heavy menstrual bleeding (menorrhagia) since one year and lump in abdomen like she was seven months pregnant. "She appeared weak due to which she was unable to take care of her two children," said Dr Ganesh Shinde, dean of the municipal hospital.

"Medical tests revealed her haemoglobin was low. So we decided to boost her haemoglobin level and then we performed the operation after 10 days, which lasted for almost two hours," said Shinde, a gynaecologist who led the team of doctors which performed the surgery. The surgery was performed with minimal blood loss and when uterus was removed, it weighed 2.75 kg studded with multiple fibroids, he said.

Fibroids are non-cancerous tumours that grow from the muscle layers of the uterus. Another gynaecologist Dr Hemlata Kuhite, who assisted in the surgery, said patient was doing fine and discharged on April 9. She said, "Fibroid uterus is one of the most common gynaecological disorders encountered by the practising doctors." Explaining the symptoms of such fibroids, she said they can manifest in heavy menstrual bleeding, painful menstruation, irregular bleeding and painful intercourse. If not treated properly, fibroids can get enlarged and lead to pressure on surrounding structures, causing a host of other problems, Kuhite said.