A 22-year-old Chinese man living in Shanghai had 30 inches of his extremely swollen colon surgically removed.
His colon was filled with feces that had accumulated there over his lifetime and weighed in at nearly 29 lbs.
The man’s blockage was caused by Hirschsprung’s disease which is a congenital condition which occurs when portions of a person’s bowel are missing nerve cells.
He is expected to fully recover.
The Sun reports:
A TEAM of surgeons have removed 30 inches of a man’s large intestines after a rare condition caused severe constipation to build up over years.
The 22-year-old, unnamed patient, is thought to have been born with Hirschsprung’s disease (HD).
The condition means the nerves that control the bowels, and help them to squeeze and relax to push stools out, are missing.
As a result poo can build up and cause a blockage.
The patient, treated at the 10th People’s Hospital of Shanghai in eastern China, began to bulge at a very young age, his doctors reported.
His tummy swelled to such a size, that he looked like he was heavily pregnant.
He’s relied on laxatives and other medicines for constipation to force his bowel movements, for years.
But, now a team of experts led by Dr Yin Lu, have operated to relieve his pain.
Dr Lu said he was stunned by that size of his patient’s abdomen, nothing it “looked like to could explode at any time”.
It’s thought the man was in so much pain after years of living with his condition that he finally sought medical help.
Tests quickly confirmed the young man had months’ – if not years’ – worth of faeces trapped in a section of his colon.
He was taken into the operating theatre and underwent a three-hour op to have 30 inches of gut removed.
Docs stitched it closed at either end, to stop his stools falling out.
And after popping it on the scales, they realised it weighed a staggering 13kgs – or two stone.
Dr Lu said the patient is stable after surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.
HD affects around one in every 5,000 births.
It is typically diagnosed in babies and children and causes severe constipation that can lead to a dangerous bowel infection, called enterocolitis if it’s not treated early on.
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