Giant tumour nearly half the size of brain removed from patient in UAE
52-year-old patient was suffering from severe headaches and imbalance
Al Ain: The neurosurgery team at Tawam Hospital — one of the facilities of the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (SEHA) - have removed a meningioma from the brain of a 52-year-old patient from a Gulf state.
The patient was suffering from severe headaches and imbalance in addition to fading vision.
The operation was performed by Dr Muhammad Al-Asha, brain tumour and skull base surgery consultant, along with a team that included Dr Hussam Abu Khdeir, specialist neurosurgeon and Dr Riyad Khishzai, consultant anaesthetist. It took about six hours, and the patient made a full recovery and left the hospital after four days. She has now returned to a normal life.
Dr Al-Asha said the size of the tumour was almost 600ml, which is nearly half the normal brain volume in an adult person (1400ml). This type of benign brain tumour is common and affects women more than men. The engagement of the growth with the main venous sinuses in the brain required microscopic microsurgery to radically remove the tumour.
It is worth noting that the size of this tumour (12cm in its largest diameter) is one of the largest sizes of tumours confined to the skull that have been dealt with in the world (the largest being 14.5cm according to reports), and it is perhaps the largest ever of this type of tumour that has been reported in the UAE.
The Department of Neurosurgery at Tawam Hospital is considered the first national centre specialised in brain tumour surgery. It conducts an average of 120 specialised surgeries in complex brain tumours and endoscopic skull base surgery each year, besides 300 brain and spine operations per year.