A TEENAGE girl’s breasts grew to a quarter of her body weight due to a rare puberty side effect.
The 15-year-old girl’s chest began growing dramatically when she was 13.
In the two years before she was seen by medics, her breasts grew to a staggering 2.5st (36lbs) – over a quarter of her entire body weight (9st 7lbs).
At just 5’2, the teen dealt with constant lower back pain and posture issues and even had trouble walking or doing normal daily activities.
She also suffered “marked psychological distress” and body image issues, leading her to withdraw from socialising.
The girl, whose case was detailed in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports with the consent of her guardian, visited medics at Mohammed VI University Hospital in Morocco.
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The skin of her breasts was “markedly” stretched.
Despite no significant previous medical history, she was diagnosed with juvenile gigantomastia – a rare breast development abnormality that appears during puberty, resulting in extremely oversized breasts.
The condition can also appear during pregnancy or from taking medication.
It can often be caused by hypersensitivity to the female sex hormone oestrogen, medics said.
But they observed no hormonal abnormalities in the teen after assessing her.
Doctors removed around 17lbs of tissue from each breast in a procedure which lasted seven hours.
What is gigantomastia?
Gigantomastia is a rare condition that causes excessive breast growth.
The exact cause isn’t known and it can occur randomly, during puberty, pregnancy, or after taking certain medications.
The breast growth can occur over the course of a few years, but there have been some cases of gigantomastia where a woman’s breasts grew three or more cup sizes within a few days.
Other symptoms include breast pain, posture problems, infections, and back pain.
While gigantomastia is considered a non-cancerous condition, it can be physically disabling if not treated.
In some cases, the condition resolves on its own, but many women with gigantomastia will need to have breast reduction surgery or a mastectomy.
Gigantomastia also goes by other names, including breast hypertrophy and macromastia.
Source: Healthline
The teen lost significant amounts of blood during the operation and needed a transfusion.
Within a week of the initial surgery, the teen reported “complete resolution” of back pain, improved mobility and mood.
But the 15-year-old suffered partial necrosis to her nipple, meaning the tissue started to die.
Reconstructive surgery was delayed seven months as a result.
Surgeons grafted skin from her groin area onto her breasts for the procedure.
Eight months after this procedure, the patient had a “satisfactory breast contour”, medics said.
As the patient had 16.5kg removed from her breasts, this makes her case “exceptional”, they added.
“Our case [of juvenile gigantomastia] ranks among the largest reported in an adolescent of this age group,” they wrote.
They said the teen’s breasts may continue to grow “particularly with renewed hormonal stimulation”, so she may need treatment again in the future.
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