Doctors in Miami are set to attempt one of the riskiest surgeries ever – removing a basketball-sized tumor from a teenage boy’s face before it suffocates him.
Emanuel Zayas had what he thought was a pimple growth on the side of his nose two years ago, New York Daily News reports. The growth has since ballooned into a giant mass that will most likely snap his neck off if it grows any larger.
The tumor currently weighs ten pounds, and is benign, but it blocks Zayas’ trachea, making it difficult for him to eat and swallow. As such, the fourteen-year-old is malnourished. The mass also blocks his eyesight.
Zayas is from Villa Clara in Cuba, where he lives with his parents. He arrived in Miami on a medical visa three weeks ago. Doctors in Cuba have refused to perform an operation on him to remove the tumor. Noel Zayas and Melvis Vizaino, his parents, had visited numerous doctors in Cuba in failed attempts to get someone to help.
The teen was born with polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, a rare condition that causes his body to grow scar-like tissue instead of bone, which in turn causes fractures and limb deformities.
Zayas’ father said,
I knocked on a lot of hospital doors. I thank God that we’re here…To see our son deforming and all we can do is watch, it’s not easy.
Dr. Robert Marx, chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery for the University of Miami Health System will head the team of doctors who will perform the operation, the Miami Herald states. At a news conference at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Marx said, “It’s life threatening by its very weight. If nothing is done, it will cause a fracture of his neck.”
Marx and the team are doing this as volunteers. “We’re doing this because how can we not help this young man,” he said. It will take an estimated 12 hours for the tumor to be removed. After that, Zayas will have to undergo reconstructive facial surgery.
The surgery will take place at Jackson’s Holtz Children’s Hospital on January 12.
