Doctors in the province of Villa Clara managed to successfully remove a four-pound malignant tumor that was lodged in the chest of a 69-year-old patient. The complex surgery was carried out in the city of Santa Clara, at the ‘Celestino Hernández Robau’ Cancer Hospital.
The event was celebrated with great fanfare by the official press, something that is understandable considering the serious shortage of medical supplies that the Island faces, which makes this type of surgical procedures more difficult.
According to state journalist Belkis Vidal, this was done by a multidisciplinary team that did everything possible to remove a liposarcoma, a rare type of cancer that affects a patient’s fat cells.
This would be the second highly complex thoracic surgery performed in Villa Clara. The operation required the removal of the round cell liposarcoma from the elderly man’s right costal wall, a high-risk procedure.
Specifically, the doctors revealed that said tumor was attached to several ribs, and affected several other structures inside the patient, from the fifth to the eighth rib, the right hemidiaphragm, the right part of the sternum, the pericardial fat and a considerable portion of the middle lobe of the right lung.
Dr. Yoel Ramo Rodríguez, a specialist in thoracic surgery who led the multidisciplinary team, indicated that the patient, identified as Leoncio Hernández Quintero, shows a favorable evolution despite having only been operated on for six days, as he does not present dyspnea, walks and is feeds orally.
Similar case in Villa Clara
In the middle of the previous year, another team of doctors performed a similar surgery on a 70-year-old man, who had a 10-pound tumor in his left hemithorax. This caused many problems to the patient’s health, even collapsing one of his lungs due to its large size.
The titanic work carried out by doctors on the Island is undoubtedly difficult, especially due to the current situation of the Cuban Health System, which has been considerably affected by the worst economic crisis in the history of the Island.
A case that demonstrates this was that of a group of doctors in Granma who was sentenced to several years in prison for alleged medical negligence. This group, as well as other colleagues who learned about the case, reported that they carried out their work adequately, but that there was nothing they could do due to the shortage of essential materials when performing surgery.
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