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We present: Photos of the 'breast' that a woman had removed from her back.

Simply the breast.

An anonymous Dublin woman has had a breast-sized tumour removed from her back which had been growing for over ten years.

Despite its location, it had all the makings of a breast, except the nipple part.

The woman told medical staff that whilst she had known about the tumour on the right side of her back for more than a decade, it had grown exponentially in the last three years.

Suspecting the mass may be a soft-tissue cancer, doctors immediately conducted an MRI scan on the 46-year-old patient. Despite their initial predictions however, the mammoth tumour which measured at 19cm long and 6.7cm wide, was found to be free of any cancerous cells. Instead, it was found made up of fat cells, known as a lipoma.

The boob-like lipoma shocked doctors, who said that fatty masses do not typically exceed 1cm in size, making this one of the largest lipomas they had seen.

Dr Tunde Abdulsalam told MailOnline, ‘It is unusual to let it grow that big. Most patients would have it removed sooner for cosmetic reasons.

‘From my clinical experience most lipomas are small in size. And most patients frequently leave it alone because it is relatively stable for years and does not affect bodily function.

‘But in some cases, it can increase in size as a person’s BMI increases.’

Doctors believe that the 46-year-old’s heavy smoking habit in conjunction with her history of chronic obstructive airway disease may have caused the strange growth.

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Top Comments

Rush 9 years ago

OK, I will admit that I'm not the greatest when it comes to getting things seen to by a medical professional. I had a sore shoulder for a good few months before I went to see my Physio and got it sorted. But how do you wait 10 YEARS to get something seen to? Especially when it's been growing rapidly for three years! I'm glad it turned out to be benign, but she could have been in big trouble if it wasn't.

Mandy 9 years ago

Reading between the lines here, I highly suspect the woman has some pretty serious mental health issues. For sure. How could someone of 'sound mind', so to speak, get on with life with a thing like that hanging off your back? It looks like it would have been pretty painful too.