Doctors from the Zabok General Hospital and the Croatian Veterans Hospital successfully removed a lipoma - a tumor weighing 10 kilograms - from the abdomen of a 59-year-old patient from the Zabok area in northwestern Croatia.

The operation was performed last Wednesday under the direction of Tomislav Vukić, a general and abdominal surgery specialist with 26 years of experience, reports Zagorje International.

"The patient expressed full confidence in the hospital and our surgeons, we reviewed all his findings and assessed that this could be done here. This was a rare, unusual case," Vukic said.

He said that the removed tumor was not a record for the Zabok hospital and that these types of tumors can normally grow to more than 30 kilograms. In his 26 years of experience, Vukic remembers only three or four such cases.

"It's a tumor that grows from the back of the abdominal cavity, from fatty tissue. They are usually discovered when they grow very large, because initially the patient has no symptoms. It's just ordinary fatty tissue, like that found in other parts of the body when a person gains weight. It doesn't hurt to suspect anything. Sometimes other tests can detect it accidentally," he said.

The 59-year-old is recovering well and will soon be released home.

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