After watching a tumor develop for over a decade, doctors in India are finally agreeing to operate on a 17-year-old boy, giving him a chance to enjoy a more normal life.
For over the past ten years, a teenage boy (who has requested his identity to remain anonymous) has watched a massive tumor develop on his face. The growth has slowly, but surely, taken over his face and made it impossible to breathe, eat, or speak without struggling.
This growth is incredibly rare; he is one of six reported cases of patients who have suffered from juvenile nasopharyngeal angiofibroma, a benign but aggressive tumor that develops predominantly in young men due to their hormones.
The growth consists largely of blood vessels, which is why doctors waited so long to operate. They couldn’t be sure that they could fully remove the tumor without causing drastic bleeding.
Even now, when they did decide to operate to help improve the boy’s quality of life, the doctors were incredibly uncertain if they would be able to succeed.
“'The tumour can start from a place behind the nose and para-nasal sinuses along the base of the skull and expands everywhere into the nose, sinuses, eyes, cheek and even into the brain,” said Dr. J C Passey. “Though, it is not a cancerous tumor but due its massive bleeding tendency, it may pose a threat to life.”
In the boy’s three-hour surgery, doctors were, thankfully, able to remove the tumor safely after first lowering the boy’s blood pressure to avoid rapid bleeding. The entire growth weighed about 750 grams.
The boy is now, we are happy to report, making a full recovery.
