This woman lived with a breast-shaped lump on her back for 10 years

Doctors said they were unsure why the 46-year-old did not come to see them sooner

(BMJ)

Ten years after first noticing a lump, a woman in Dublin has had a growth the size of a large breast removed from her back.

Doctors said they were unsure why the 46-year-old did not come to see them sooner, particularly as the growth grew rapidly over the past three years.

However, she arrived at a clinic in Dublin to have it examined, and is now on a waiting list to have it removed.

The unnamed woman may have been afraid it was cancerous. This was the main worry of doctors when they saw the 19 cm growth , which felt firm but not tender, according to the BMJ case report.

However, their fears it was a soft tissue cancer known as sarcoma were assuaged when an MRI scan showed it to be a giant lipoma - or a benign tumour made of fat cells.

The woman was a heavy smoker, with a history of chronic obstructive airway disease, according to the report.

It said: "Lipomas such as these are usually painless, soft and small at about 1 cm, but they can be giant lipomas greater than 10 cm in size."

This growth was of such an "impressive" size, and belong to an order which are usually removed, a doctor told the Daily Mail.

Co-author of the report, Dr Tunde Abdulsalam, said it was one of the biggest lipomas he had ever seen.

‘It is unusual to let it grow that big. Most patients would have it removed sooner for cosmetic reasons," he told the Daily Mail.