A team of Romanian and US doctors have successfully removed a tumour weighing 80 kg (175 lb) from a woman patient in an operation lasting ten hours.
The 47-year-old woman had been largely confined to bed because of the tumour, which weighed almost double her body weight and covered her back, waist and hips.
"She is very well, the lack of the tumour really suits her," Dr Ion Lascar, head of the plastic surgery department of Floreasca Hospital in Bucharest, said.
Dr Lascar headed the medical team together with a US surgeon who successfully removed a 91 kg (200 lb) tumour from an American woman in 1998.
The woman's family said they had long tried unsuccessfully to raise money for the operation, which was eventually paid for by the Washington-based Discovery Channel in exchange for film rights.
The tumour, which initially appeared as a small lump when she was 22, was removed when it had reached 15 kg (33 lb) but then reappeared and grew still bigger.
Other doctors had been afraid to operate because the area has many blood vessels and they lacked the experience and equipment to stop the bleeding.
According to the Guinness World Records, the largest tumour ever removed intact weighed 137 kg (302 lb). It was removed in 1991 and the woman patient made a full recovery.