Is it a Fat Belly or a Cyst?

Here's an incredible story of one woman who went to her doctor repeatedly, complaining of a huge and swollen stomach. He told her she was overweight and prescribed weight-loss pills (Duramine) to her.

Finally, after many months, and in huge pain, she was taken by ambulance to the hospital where they found an ovarian cyst that weighed more than 30 pounds; more than four newborn babies! The cyst was safely removed.

Her weight dropped from 163 to 126 pounds after the surgery. This woman, 44, had had three children in the past.

Her lawyer said the case was not about failure to diagnose an ovarian cyst.

"It's about a failure to recognise she had an abnormal and undoubtedly a very distended abdomen," he said.

"The woman was visibly upset on the first day of the hearing yesterday as she described her symptoms, including having a "humungous" stomach, bloating and pain."

Expert witness Gerald Young, an Auckland doctor with a special interest in surgery, said Dr S made several moderate to serious departures from accepted professional standards, including his failure to calculate the patient's body mass index and take her waist measurement as a baseline before prescribing Duromine.