An Egyptian believed to be the world’s heaviest woman at 78st has been flown to Mumbai for life saving surgery
For more than two decades, Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty has not left her home in Egypt. But now the 36-year-old woman is set to travel 4,345 kilometres to Mumbai for potentially life-saving surgery. Abd El Aty weighs 500 kilograms, according to her family.
To prepare her for the flight, doctors spent the last ten days optimising the conditions to make the 36-year-old’s journey more comfortable.
Eman was lifted by a crane into Saifee Hospital where she will undergo weight reduction surgery, according to Hindustan Times
As a child
As a child she was diagnosed with elephantiasis, a condition that causes the limbs to swell.
But after a stroke she was left bedridden, which led to diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension and sleep apnoea.
She will undergo Bariatric surgery, a stomach shrinking bypass procedure.
Beforehand, doctors will run a number of tests to see what is causing the huge weight gain.
Dr Muffazal Lakdawala
Muffazal Lakdawala, a bariatric surgeon at the Center for Obesity and Digestive Surgery in Mumbai, will operate on Abd El Aty. The doctor has performed the most single-incision laparoscopic surgeries, a minimally-invasive procedure that relies on video cameras threaded into the body, in the world, according to his bio on the medical center’s website.
The Times of India reported that Lakdawala has operated on high-ranking Indian politicians, including two ministers in India’s cabinet.
Lakdawala told The Washington Post he has operated on patients above 660 pounds before, but Abd El Aty’s surgery will be “very high risk.”
Abd El Aty’s sister contacted Lakdawala after Egyptian doctors determined there was little they could do for the bedridden woman. When Lakdawala received her photograph, the surgeon was stunned.
“My initial reaction was, ‘How is she even alive?'” Lakdawala said. But he was determined to help. “If I can somehow use whatever God-gifted talent I have to save her,” he said, “I must try.”
