Women with shocking tumour-covered faces to be operated on

American surgeon McKay McKinnon who recently successfully removed a 90kg tumour from a man's leg is to give the same new lease of life to two other patients horribly disfigured by tumours.

Patient Thach Thi Sa Ly has thousands of tumours covering her face, body and even eyes, while Kieu Thi My Dung has horrifying tub tuber-like tumours obscuring half of her face.

The news was released by Doctor Nguyen Truong Son, head of Cho Ray General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh to VnExpress Newswire Thursday.

Sa Ly, 35, from the southern province of Soc Trang, sufferes from a strange skin disease which has resulted in thousands of tumors covering her body from head to toe.

The tumors are of different sizes, with some as big as lemons or oranges. Ly can hardly see, as her eyes are also covered with these carbuncles.

She has been living in pain for over 20 years and cannot walk, so Ly has had to depend on her 60-year-old mother, Thach Sa Phai, for her daily activities.

Doctor McKinnon is scheduled to perform surgery on Ly on Sunday, Doctor Son said, while another operation on My Dung will be done on Saturday.

Both of the patients are now hospitalized at Cho Ray.

My Dung, 22 from Da Lat city, has a large tumor that covers the most of her face.

Dung's mother said she was only 1.5kg at birth, and both of her eyes looked different from the other.

Soon, a small tumor started developing near her eyelid when she was three months old.

On Thursday Doctor McKinnon successfully removed a 90 kilogram tumor from 32-year-old Nguyen Duy Hai in a massive 10-hour operation that he led with a team of local doctors and nurses of the France - Vietnam Hospital.

Hai has been bed-ridden for years because of the huge size of the tumour.

Mr Hai was born a normal child but developed the tumour soon after. When he was four years old, his right leg showed abnormal signs of growing much faster than the left.

At 17, the tumour weighed about 25kg, which steadily grew to about 90kg.

This article was contributed by Tuoi Tre News. For more information, visit the website http://www.tuoitrenews.vn/.