Rohit Shishodia

Breast reduction surgery carried out by doctors of Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital has given a new life to UAE’s 60-year-old woman.

The woman had extremely huge breasts and she was suffering from severe backache, pain in neck, difficulty in walking, excessive pressure on the shoulder due to bra straps and rashes (Intertrigo) underneath her breasts leading a miserable quality of life for 30 years.

Dr Rajeev B Ahuja, Senior Consultant, Department of Plastic & Aesthetic Surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said, “I was shocked when I examined the patient. She was having extremely huge breasts (Gigantomastia) in which the breasts were reaching two inches below the Navel.”

Dr Ahuja added, “In my last 40 years of experience I have seen many huge breasts but this patient had the largest breasts. The size of which I had never seen before, and which were the root cause of all her symptoms leading to extremely poor quality of life.”

“Now the challenge for us was not just to reduce the size of breasts and take the load of her chest but to provide her an aesthetically pleasing result,” he further said.

Dr Ahuja added, “Gigantomastia is a very rare disorder where breasts grow excessively humongous. Only a couple hundred cases have been reported in the medical literature.”

He pointed out that most of the times it occurs spontaneously or due to overtly sensitive breast tissues to the hormones. At times after pregnancy breasts don’t revert back to the normal size. Patients feel as if they are carrying huge a weight over their chest. Surgery was challenging and lasted five and half hours.

Dr Ahuja emphasised that in most of these cases the standard surgery is to do a partial amputation of the breast with free nipple/ areola grafting which is not aesthetically pleasing even if it reduces the load on the chest.

He said that in this case doctors’ team including Dr Raman Sharma, Associate Consultant and Dr Pooja Gupta, Senior Resident from Department of Plastic & Aesthetic Surgery decided to do the breast reduction by a standard technique used for large breasts but not recommended for Gigantomastia.

He explained that this is because the technique of inferior pedicle reduction can lead to discoloration of the nipple/ areola complex if applied to such huge breasts.

“We had to modify the technique to transport the nipple-areolar complex on a very long pedicle but we had still cautioned the patient of the need to resort to partial amputation procedure intra-operatively (during the surgery) should there be concerns about the viability of the nipple-areolar complex,” Dr Ahuja explained.

“We removed 1.3Kg of breast tissue on the left side and 1.4Kg of tissue on the right side on each side (total 2.7Kgs, which is very huge). The definition of Gigantomastia is made after the surgery if the weight of the breast tissue removed is 0.8Kg to 2Kgs,” he said.  

“By definition our patient’s breasts were even more than definition of Gigantomastia. The surgery was successful and the post-surgery period was smooth and uneventful. A very pleasant aesthetic look was achieved and patient was discharged three days after surgery. Stitches were removed 12-14 days after the surgery. She was advised to avoid strenuous exercise or to lift heavy weights for six weeks. She is now wearing a cup size “C/D” bra without any discomfort and living a pain free happy life,” Dr Ahuja explained.