A giant bladder stone weighing more than a kilogram has been removed from a long-suffering man in China.
Doctors removed the huge ball of minerals and proteins from a man named Mr Zhang in Wuhan, in the Hubei Province of China
Medical staff were stunned when they first spotted the 11cm wide mass on an x-ray after the 43-year-old patient had complained of urinary pains.
Bladderly hell: This x-ray shows the enormous lump that had developed in 43-year-old Mr Zhang in China
Chief surgeon Wu Tianpeng says it is the largest bladder stone he has ever seen - it is also the 2nd heaviest stone ever found in China.
The heaviest one, which was also the world's heaviest bladder stone, was removed from a 40-year-old Chinese woman farmer in 2009.
It weighed in at more than twice the weight of this one at an incredible 2,400gms.
The stone was so large that the operation to remove it, which normally takes 20 minutes, took over an hour.
Dr Wu said: 'A normal person's bladder could only contain 300-500ml of urine or 1,000ml at a maximum.
'This stone occupied a space of more than 700ml. It must be have been quite a pain for him.'
Bladder stones are small stones that form inside the bladder. They can irritate the wall of the bladder and disrupt the flow of urine out of it.
Whopper: This 1,025g bladder stone was removed from a man in the Hubei Province of China
Symptoms can include pain in the lower abdomen which often becomes severe, changes to the normal pattern of urination, such as having to pass urine much more frequently or waking up in the night needing to go to the toilet.
Other problems caused by bladder stones include blood in the urine and pain when urinating.
Birmingham GP Dr Sarah Hughes was staggered to hear about such a large bladder stone.
She said: 'That is big! You can get stones anywhere from your kidney to your bladder. It depends on where they are as to what pain they can cause.
'They can cause particular discomfort if you are trying to pass water and you can get blood appearing in the water.'
Dr Ian Campbell, a GP in Nottingham was also taken aback by the size of the stone.
He added: 'That's pretty massive, it makes you wonder what symptoms he had leading up to the removal of the lump.
'Normally stones are just a few centimetres wide, so this is a pretty major procedure and I cannot recall ever seeing anything anywhere near as big as this being removed from someone.'
China has a bit of a history of people with internal stone problems.
Last year doctors in the country removed an incredible 11,688 gall stones from 45-year-old Luo from Kunming in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
It reportedly took nurses three days to count all the tiny stones and the final figure was double the previous figure recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.
Hard work: Dr Wu Tianpeng holding the giant bladder stone which he was stunned to discover, but was able to remove
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153277/Thats-Ive-got-pain-belly-Enormous-bladder-stone-weighing-1kg-removed-man-China.html#ixzz1wZjIxHjg
