1951: Doctors in Chicago complete the longest operation in history – a four-day marathon – to remove an enormous 300-pound ovarian cyst from a 58-year-old patient.

The patient, Gertrude Levandowski, was a resident of Burnips, Michigan. After her husband died in the early 1940s, she began to gain weight because of an undiagnosed ovarian cyst.

Ten years after his death, the growth had caused her to balloon to over 600 pounds and develop heart problems. Local doctors were flummoxed: The tumor needed to be removed, but because of Levandowski's cardiac issues, the procedure would almost certainly lead to her death.

In stepped Dr. M.S. Roberts. He proposed a profoundly different method of removing the cyst: Instead of merely hacking it out, he proposed gradually draining fluid from the cyst – like slowly deflating a balloon – then removing the desiccated tumor once it no longer presented a threat to Levandowski's strained ticker.

Roberts started draining the cyst Feb. 1. Progress was extremely slow-going: The tumor's fluid was extracted to the tune of 120 drops per minute. Roughly 200 pounds of fluid had been removed after four days, leaving a smaller, more manageable tumor that no longer posed a risk to Levandowski's heart. A contemporary Time magazine piece described the shrunken cyst as being about the size of a "bushel basket," or 8 gallons.

The stocky, cheerful Levandowski quickly recovered form her ordeal. When she arrived at the hospital, she weighed around 620 pounds. After the operation she was a lithe 308 pounds.

Four months later, she underwent another operation that removed 50 pounds of excess skin. That dropped her weight below 300 pounds for the first time in decades.

Take that, Weight Watchers!

Source: Various

Image: An ovarian cyst of typical size looks like this.

Courtesy National Library of Medecine