Tumor removal from a newborn twice the size

Doctors at an Australian hospital managed to remove a huge tumor from a newborn baby girl that was twice her size, after a complex surgery that took six hours.  

Saylor Thompson was born at Matter Hospital for Mothers in Brisbane, Australia, in August weighing 1,025 grams, three months prematurely.

The reason for her great weight at that time was the presence of a sacrococcygeal teratoma in the back area.

Minutes after her birth, Thompson was taken to surgery where a team of 25 people worked to successfully remove the tumor for six hours.

"The tumor had spread to her pelvis and abdomen and it was very large and very complex," said Professor Salish Kumar from Mater's maternal-fetal medicine unit.

Professor Kumar estimated that the tumor was the largest he had ever seen in the hospital.

Now, two months after the surgery, the doctors said the baby has made a great recovery and is getting stronger every day.

Sacrococcygeal teratoma is one of the most common neonatal neoplasms, affecting 1 in 400,000 live births.

When parents Rachel and Kieran Thompson found out about their daughter's tumor at 20 weeks pregnant, they were told that the girl's survival rate was 25-40%.

And the "Andy 100" website quoted her mother as saying at the time, "When the social worker and the surgeons met for the first time to tell us that she had little chance of life because of the tumor, she cried hysterically."

"But being able to hold Saylor in my arms and knowing that she has passed to the other side (life) is something special," she added.

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