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Woman has 70-pound ovarian cyst removed

A scalpel. (Photo: aesop/Flickr/Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/))

A woman had surgery to remove a 70-pound ovarian cyst after she began to have trouble walking, breathing and eating.

It is believed to be the largest ever removed whole.

The 24-year-old woman from Mexico, who did not want to be identified, noticed she had put on about 56 pounds although she was dieting, according to the Sun. It turned out the weight gain was because of an ovarian cyst that expanded to 73 pounds over 11 months.

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"From all the research I've found, it's believed that this is the largest ovarian cyst ever to be removed whole, without draining it first or spilling it," Dr. Erik Hanson Viana, the Mexico General Hospital surgeon who performed the operation about six months ago, told the Sun. "It's really rare to operate on a cyst this big, it measured (a foot and a half) in diameter and the circumference was (around 5 feet)."

Viana, 27, said the cyst was crushing her lungs and would have gotten worse.

“If we hadn’t operated, it would have gotten to the point where she wouldn’t have been able to walk, would be severely malnourished and unable to eat,” Viana said.

She walked out of the hospital two days after the surgery, Viana said.