Chinese man successfully gets football sized tumour removed from his face

A Chinese man has successfully had a tumour the size of a football removed from his face.

Details are scant on the operation performed on Chen Jianguo at Sun Yat-sen University Hospital in Guangzhou, but as these pictures illustrate the change in his appearance is drastic.

The 37-year-old is said to have first developed a small tumour on his head in 1995.

Not wanting to be a burden on his parents, he left the family home in Liandu town, Zhaoqing city in 1998 and decided to live rough.

"I told them that they have to take care of my brothers and sisters," he told a reporter in a video report uploaded to YouTube in May of last year.

"They can forget they ever gave birth to me."

t would seem that Chen was prepared for the worst before the remarkable surgery on the debilitating tumour.

"I will receive the operation, even if the risk of it going wrong is large," he is reported to have said.

"If successful, the first thing I'm going to do is go home.

"If not, I'm glad to donate my organs to anyone who needs them."



Sun Yat-sen University's website - including a separate site for the institution's Cancer Center - does not carry any details relating to the incredible medical procedure.

The university, located mainly in Guangzhou, is named after the founding father and first president of the Republic of China.