Shocking footage shows a 40-year-old Italian woman’s left breast growing to three to four times its natural size after a suspected reaction to fertility treatment.
The unnamed patient, described as a housewife, developed a condition called unilateral gigantomastia, in which only one breast becomes abnormally large.
Doctors who reported the case said it was “one of the most extreme” of its kind they had ever seen and that the exact cause of the woman’s bulging breast was unknown.
However, they added that the hormone treatment the woman was taking to help her conceive was the most likely culprit.
The report, published in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, describes how the breast gradually grew over the three years after the woman became pregnant.
She reported having severe back pain, difficulty walking, and psychological problems as a result of the massively unbalanced growth.
Doctors examining her case first conducted tests to rule out breast cancer, but they were negative.
However, these tests revealed that her left breast had diffuse ductal hyperplasia, a condition in which cells in the breast milk ducts grow abnormally.
Shocking footage shows how a 40-year-old Italian woman’s left breast grew to enormous size after a suspected reaction to fertility treatment
The unnamed woman, believed to be from Campania in southern Italy, eventually underwent breast reduction surgery to alleviate her symptoms. Here she is in the photo one year after the operation
Although it is not cancer itself, data suggests that women who suffer from the condition are at greater risk of developing breast cancer in the future.
The woman, believed to be from Campania in southern Italy, eventually underwent breast reduction surgery to alleviate her symptoms.
Surgeons successfully removed 3.45kg of breast tissue from her left breast to give her a balanced chest.
One year later, the patient reported being very satisfied with the results of her surgery, both in terms of symptom reduction and aesthetics.
The surgeons described it as ‘one of the most extreme cases of gigantomastia encountered in our surgical experience’.
Gigantomastia, medically defined as breast tissue weighing more than 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs), is rare; only about 300 hundreds of cases are reported in the medical literature.
Researchers are still investigating what causes gigantomastia to develop, either in one breast or both, although an imbalance of hormones, response to medications, autoimmune diseases and genetics are thought to be some factors.