Doctors at Kauvery Hospital in Chennai have successfully operated on a 56-year-old woman to remove a rare kind of tumour from a major blood vessel closely associated with the liver.

A statement by the hospital said that the woman, from Salem, was diagnosed with a tumour in the inferior vena cava, the largest vein in the body that passes through the liver.

K. Elankumaran, head, Liver Diseases, Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery, Kauvery Hospital, said that the woman had complaints of indigestion and abdominal pain. “Ultra sound showed that there was a large rumour measuring 10 by 10 cm. Immediate removal was needed to avoid further complications,” he said. He said that while the possibility of the tumour arising in other organs like lungs or intestines and spreading into the liver was common, it was quite rare for a tumour to grow from the liver and to spread to other organs. “This can turn fatal if not diagnosed and treated in time,” he added.

N. Sekar Natarajan, senior consultant, vascular surgeon at the hospital, said that since the major vein was affected, a portion of it had to be removed and grafted through a vascular graft.

The press release said that the whole surgery took around 10 hours and the woman recovered well, and was fit for discharge within a week.

Congratulating the team, Aravindan Selvaraj, co-founder and executive director of the hospital, said that liver diseases were a leading cause of deaths in India and highly skilled medical professionals and state-of-the-art infrastructure were needed in treating complex diseases.