Doctors find cyst with teeth, hair in 18-year-old

While his friends would be out playing football and cricket and just running around, Belcon had to sit on the sidelines. He would have difficulty breathing after participating in anything strenuous. Again, this was dismissed as him being overweight.

It was only by sheer chance that during a surgery at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC), Mt Hope, doctors found a cyst that was crushing his lungs, “the size of a basketball.”

“I was always a little fat and thought that was the reason for my short breath. Right now I’m doing an electrical course with the Civilian Conservation Corps, but in January I started working with my dad part time doing construction. That was when it became more difficult for me to breathe,” Belcon told Sunday Newsday.

“I started coughing a lot, but I said that it was all the dust at the construction site. My dad told me to go to the hospital to check it out, but I just dismissed it. Then I started coughing up blood and my dad insisted that I go and see a doctor,” Belcon said.

Belcon visited the San Fernando General Hospital where doctors did an x-ray, which revealed a large mass in his chest. Unable to diagnose the mass, Belcon was sent to EWMSC where doctors were also unable to say what the mass was, which by all indications of the x-ray looked to be a tumour.

A biopsy was done and the results came back as non-cancerous, so Belcon was discharged and told to return on March 23, which he did. The next day he was scheduled for surgery.

The doctors performing the surgery were expecting a cyst, but it was unlike any that they had seen. The sheer size of it was surprising, but what was found within was even more so. There was hair and teeth and what looked like eyes of an underdeveloped foetus, but doctors are yet to confirm this.

The teen and his family believed it was his “underdeveloped twin” and are still unable to understand how this came to be or how he lived so long with this condition without further complications.

Belcon’s aunt, Lisa Peters, with whom he had been staying in Tunapuna because of the close proximity to the hospital, said the family still found the whole surgery and discovery “unbelievable.”

“We all thought that it was a tumour but nothing like this. It took me by surprise, it took his mother by surprise and she is still in shock. It’s the strangest thing,” Peters said.

Even Belcon remained bewildered as he showed the Sunday Newsday the long, red scar running down the centre of his chest.

“Feel here, do you feel that?” Belcon asked as he pointed to a spot on his chest. “That is the steel they used to hold my chest together.”

His lungs were also underdeveloped because of the weight of the growth and he now uses a spirometer to practise his breathing exercises to strengthen his lungs.

“I did not get to see what they took out, but the doctors said it was big like a basketball. In a photo they took the doctor pointed out teeth and hair. I used to weigh between 180 to 190 pounds before the surgery, and my chest was puffed out in front and my breasts were bigger,” Belcon said.

He now weighs 160 pounds.

Head of the cardiothoracic team who performed the surgery, Mr Ian Ramnarine, said while this condition, called teratoma, was rare, it was well recognised in the medical world.

A teratoma is an encapsulated tumor with tissue or organ components resembling normal derivatives that can come from any cell site such as the hair, teeth skin. The tissues of a teratoma, although normal in themselves, may be quite different from surrounding tissues, and may be highly disparate.

Teratomas have been reported to contain hair, teeth, bone and very rarely more complex organs such as eye, torso, and hands, feet, or other limbs. Usually, however, a teratoma will contain no organs but rather one or more tissues normally found in organs such as the brain, thyroid, liver, and lung.

“When you are a foetus, the cells are primitive cell types which can develop into any kind of tissue such as hair and limbs and so on, which is what we found in the cyst. These are normal cell types that can develop in unusual places,” Ramnarine said.

The doctor said he had never seen a teratoma of this size before, adding that these usually occurred in the ovaries, testes and chest.

He said the medical team, which included junior doctors Nahmorah Bobb and Raakesh Goalan, found teeth and hair in the cyst, and what looked like eyes, but they were awaiting a full report before confirming this.

“This one was very unusual because of its size. It was one foot long and weighed eight pounds. It had occupied more than half of his chest and had pushed his heart all the way to the left. It took five hours to remove the cyst. The right lung was very small, less than a quarter the size of the left lung. ?????????? ??? ???? ????? ?????????? ?????????????, ????????? ????? ???????? ??????? ?? ?????? ??????? - ?????????? ??????????, ????????, ?????????? ? ??????????????? ??????? ???????? ? ???? ????????. ?? ????? ?????? ????????? ???????????? ?????? ?? ??????????? ????????? ? ?????? ?? ??????? ????????

“His lungs were underdeveloped because the size of the teratoma prevented it from developing properly. It would seem that this was inside him when he was born,” Ramnarine said.

The doctor said one of the dangers of Belcon living with the cyst was that if it had remained unchecked and had changed, it could have turned cancerous.