KOCHI: In a major surgical breakthrough, a specialized medical team at VPS Lakeshore Hospital, Kochi, successfully removed a massive 4-kilogram liver tumor from a 24-year-old postgraduate student preparing for the priesthood. The patient had initially noticed a minor, painless swelling on the right side of his abdomen while bathing, mistaking it for an insect bite, before advanced clinical evaluations revealed a giant tumor the size of a jackfruit. The high-risk procedure was led by Dr. Fadal H. Veerankutty, Senior Consultant in the Department of Hepatopancreatobiliary and Liver Transplant Surgery at VPS Lakeshore’s Comprehensive Liver Care Institute, alongside a surgical team comprising Dr. John Manippadam, Dr. Shafeeq, and Dr. Aravind. Having originally undergone an initial biopsy at a hospital in Vellore, the patient’s family chose to transfer his treatment to VPS Lakeshore’s Comprehensive Liver Care Institute for specialized quaternary liver care.
Further diagnostic investigations conducted at VPS Lakeshore confirmed that the patient was suffering from a Neuroendocrine Tumor (NET) that had silently metastasized over several years. Dr. Fadal H. Veerankutty explained that the primary tumor had originated in the upper small intestine at a microscopic size of just four grams before spreading to the liver, where it grew exponentially to four kilograms. The surgery posed extreme technical challenges as the giant neoplasm compressed major hepatic blood vessels and adjacent vital organs; however, the surgical team successfully resected the mass using a specialized ‘Pure Anterior Approach’ technique. Dr. Vishnu Gireesh, Consultant Hepatologist, noted that advanced radioisotope-based scanning at VPS Lakeshore pinpointed the primary intestinal source, enabling precise surgical planning. Following the complex intervention, the patient made a smooth clinical recovery and was discharged after a one-week hospital stay. Medical experts emphasized that this rare case underscores how certain neuroendocrine tumors can grow silently to massive proportions without presenting overt symptoms, highlighting the vital importance of prompt clinical imaging and multidisciplinary evaluation whenever unexplained abdominal swellings are detected.
