A woman has been given a second chance at life after Guy’s and St Thomas’ surgeons took out a “huge” tumour from her chest that she had previously been warned was inoperable.
Giovanna Distefano, 37, had been told she had just three months to live after a scan revealed the 25cm stage 4 thymoma between her lungs.
The mother of three contacted Andrea Bille a surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’, who has put together a crack team to treat people who were previously told their condition was inoperable.
Mr Bille removed the tumour, as well as one of her lungs, in a nine-hour operation that also needed the help of heart surgeon Gianluca Lucchese.
Ms Distefano said: “I feel like I am living again. I feel good. I’m walking two or three miles a day now, a bit like a 90-year-old woman, but I’m doing it. The surgery was a success. I can’t wait to go back to pilates classes and to start running again – having one lung isn’t going to stop me!”
The operation was the only one of its kind which has been performed in the UK and is among just a handful in the world that are known to have taken place.
Mr Bille said: “While this was a slow-growing tumour, it had become huge. Because Giovanna is young and fit, her body had likely compensated for the thymoma and so didn’t notice it for a long time.
“A thymoma this big is rare – there have been only a handful of others that we know of in the world, and none in the UK.”
