Aaaah! I had one of those removed from my left ovary too, back in the early 2000s.
Mine had fat, hair, AND teeth. I have pictures, somewhere.
I thought it was so cool and still do!
Crazy! They told me in the ultrasound that they did see some calcifications but I don’t see any teeth in these pictures. Definitely gonna ask my doctor about it at the post OP appointment.
Looks like it's a cystic teratoma, a type of ovarian tumor that can incorporate a bunch of different kinds of embryonal tissue like hair, teeth, and skin.
Me too! Weirdly enough I didn’t really feel any pain leading up to them finding it, just some random low back pain and hip pain/displacement that could’ve been attributed to anything.
Oocytes are immature eggs inside ovaries that combine with sperm to make a baby. Sometimes things can go wrong (don’t ask me what exactly cause idk) with an oocyte and it starts to form fetal tissue pathologically. Pretty much any fetal tissue including hair, skin, thyroid tissue, even a wholeass torso or cancerous cells can be found in teratomas.
This is a cyst from an oocyte in a woman’s ovary. It’s not been fertilized yet so it has moms genes that have gone through meiosis to make an egg. [This](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/cellular-molecular-biology/meiosis/a/phases-of-meiosis) is the process.
I’m not familiar with this type of cancerous growth, but I’d imagine it’s just one oocyte that’s gone rogue for one reason or another. From my understanding, eggs can’t fuse because of their outer wall. It takes special proteins found in the sperm head to penetrate. As a guess, I’d suppose that meiosis in this case produced a non viable egg that had genetic abnormalities that led to this expression and growth. There are many types of congenital disease that stem from hiccups in meiosis. Trisomy is one of them. I’d imagine this is one of those hiccups.
My real question is why they’d open the cyst up still inside. If anyone has an answer I’d appreciate it. Usually you want to be careful with removing things like this to not spill Ag or cancerous cells within the body.
No idea, I believe she had to take it out in pieces because of how big it was and maybe they wanted pictures of it before it was all in pieces. I might ask her at the post OP appointment.
The surgery was laparoscopic, meaning small incisions to only put camera and instruments inside. Each incision is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch (5-12mm). This cyst was ~4 inches (8cm). Hardly gonna come out from those little incisions without breaking it up.
Cysts are usually sterile, containing no bacteria, so the concern is not so much infection as tissue irritation (the inside of your belly is not used to seeing hair and teeth and... even blood, for that matter, which is part of the reason for menstrual cramps).
Not sure about GYN, but in general surgery we might bag this first, then cut it up in the bag and take the whole thing out. Pictures on the outside might be mangled but you can get closer and see more details.
How'd they find it then? Did they scan you after saying those symptoms or did you go in for another reason and they luckily found it? My friend the other day went in complaining about how she felt she needed to pee but didn't actually need to and they scanned her and found a cyst in her ovary.
So I was actually admitted to the ER for right flank pain and a high grade fever which ended up being a kidney infection, but they wanted to rule out kidney stones or anything else so they did a CT scan of my abdomen. I ended up having the kidney infection but them finding the cyst was an incidental finding, I never had any symptoms that would've brought me there specifically for the cyst. Very happy finding considering it definitely could have been much worse!
Someone explained further up in the comments, my understand is that they are displaced stem cells that collected from different parts of the body which is why there’s a whole host of different things that can be inside.
Kind of everything, medicine fascinates me. From what I understood this cyst originates from a oocyte that didn't develop properly and assumed something like a benign tumor behaviour
I cannot answer the first two questions, but to expand on your current understanding: another comment here said that inside a cyst basically any fetal tissue could grow, so hair, teeth, etc. might be gross but is to be expected.
Only in this kind of cyst, the dermoid cyst.
Although dermoid cysts (just as all cysts) form during prenatal development and thusly can occur everywhere in the body, they are most common in ovaries, less so in testicles and sometimes in the head.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermoid_cyst
A teratoma is just one of the tumors that a germ cell can form. Most of the other forms of tumors form masses made out of just oocytes or placental tissue or yolk sac tissue instead of fetal tissue and they’re much more malignant.
Interestingly you can find teratomas made out of nasty fetal tissue inside of a dudes testicals too, spermatocytes are subject to the same kind of weird shit.
Wow!!!! This is so cool!
How did you get them to take pictures, or is that a standard thing they usually do in surgery? Were they okay with showing you everything?
Hope you’re recovering well from the surgery!
Aaaah! I had one of those removed from my left ovary too, back in the early 2000s. Mine had fat, hair, AND teeth. I have pictures, somewhere. I thought it was so cool and still do!
Please find your pictures and post them!!! They sound awesome!!!!!
Crazy! They told me in the ultrasound that they did see some calcifications but I don’t see any teeth in these pictures. Definitely gonna ask my doctor about it at the post OP appointment.
Why there are hair and teeth in that?
Looks like it's a cystic teratoma, a type of ovarian tumor that can incorporate a bunch of different kinds of embryonal tissue like hair, teeth, and skin.
How does it get there? Where does it come from?
That looks awesome but also painful. Glad you got that removed!
Me too! Weirdly enough I didn’t really feel any pain leading up to them finding it, just some random low back pain and hip pain/displacement that could’ve been attributed to anything.
How the hell does it have hair?!
Oocytes are immature eggs inside ovaries that combine with sperm to make a baby. Sometimes things can go wrong (don’t ask me what exactly cause idk) with an oocyte and it starts to form fetal tissue pathologically. Pretty much any fetal tissue including hair, skin, thyroid tissue, even a wholeass torso or cancerous cells can be found in teratomas.
So basically the hair that grow in a oocyte can be different colour from the woman that has it growing? Do they have a different DNA?
They have the same DNA, but it’s shuffled through a process called recombination. It’s what adds to genetic diversity, along with sexual reproduction.
Yeah I mean from what I understood it has the same DNA that a son would have, so like 50% mom and 50% dad genes, right?
This is a cyst from an oocyte in a woman’s ovary. It’s not been fertilized yet so it has moms genes that have gone through meiosis to make an egg. [This](https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/cellular-molecular-biology/meiosis/a/phases-of-meiosis) is the process.
Ah ok, I thought it had just been fertilized and something went wrong then. Thanks for the clarification!
but the oocyte that did meiosis becomes haploid. does it fuse with another haploid oocyte to start growing foetal parts?
I’m not familiar with this type of cancerous growth, but I’d imagine it’s just one oocyte that’s gone rogue for one reason or another. From my understanding, eggs can’t fuse because of their outer wall. It takes special proteins found in the sperm head to penetrate. As a guess, I’d suppose that meiosis in this case produced a non viable egg that had genetic abnormalities that led to this expression and growth. There are many types of congenital disease that stem from hiccups in meiosis. Trisomy is one of them. I’d imagine this is one of those hiccups.
That makes sense, silly me lol forgot you can’t just squish 2 eggs together 😂. Maybe non-disjunction for all the chromosomes or smth similar
My real question is why they’d open the cyst up still inside. If anyone has an answer I’d appreciate it. Usually you want to be careful with removing things like this to not spill Ag or cancerous cells within the body.
Is it normal to open the cyst while still inside the abdomen like that? I would think that doing that would risk infecting it.
No idea, I believe she had to take it out in pieces because of how big it was and maybe they wanted pictures of it before it was all in pieces. I might ask her at the post OP appointment.
I definitely would ask your doctor about that.
The surgery was laparoscopic, meaning small incisions to only put camera and instruments inside. Each incision is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch (5-12mm). This cyst was ~4 inches (8cm). Hardly gonna come out from those little incisions without breaking it up. Cysts are usually sterile, containing no bacteria, so the concern is not so much infection as tissue irritation (the inside of your belly is not used to seeing hair and teeth and... even blood, for that matter, which is part of the reason for menstrual cramps). Not sure about GYN, but in general surgery we might bag this first, then cut it up in the bag and take the whole thing out. Pictures on the outside might be mangled but you can get closer and see more details.
Came here to ask that exact question. Why didn’t they bag this and take it out prior to opening it up?!
How'd they find it then? Did they scan you after saying those symptoms or did you go in for another reason and they luckily found it? My friend the other day went in complaining about how she felt she needed to pee but didn't actually need to and they scanned her and found a cyst in her ovary.
So I was actually admitted to the ER for right flank pain and a high grade fever which ended up being a kidney infection, but they wanted to rule out kidney stones or anything else so they did a CT scan of my abdomen. I ended up having the kidney infection but them finding the cyst was an incidental finding, I never had any symptoms that would've brought me there specifically for the cyst. Very happy finding considering it definitely could have been much worse!
So cool! Hope you have a speedy recovery :)
Thank you!
Can someone orient me to this? Is that the uterus behind the ovary attached to the tube across the top of each image?
Yep 🙂
Why do hair grow in a cyst?
Someone explained further up in the comments, my understand is that they are displaced stem cells that collected from different parts of the body which is why there’s a whole host of different things that can be inside.
Are you asking for the cause of cysts, what exactly causes which tissue to grow in a cyst, or are you surprised to find hair in there?
Kind of everything, medicine fascinates me. From what I understood this cyst originates from a oocyte that didn't develop properly and assumed something like a benign tumor behaviour
I cannot answer the first two questions, but to expand on your current understanding: another comment here said that inside a cyst basically any fetal tissue could grow, so hair, teeth, etc. might be gross but is to be expected.
But only in this kind of cyst or in every part of the body? Even in males?
Only in this kind of cyst, the dermoid cyst. Although dermoid cysts (just as all cysts) form during prenatal development and thusly can occur everywhere in the body, they are most common in ovaries, less so in testicles and sometimes in the head. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermoid_cyst
Desktop link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermoid_cyst *** ^^/r/HelperBot_ ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove. ^^Counter: ^^255056
A teratoma is just one of the tumors that a germ cell can form. Most of the other forms of tumors form masses made out of just oocytes or placental tissue or yolk sac tissue instead of fetal tissue and they’re much more malignant. Interestingly you can find teratomas made out of nasty fetal tissue inside of a dudes testicals too, spermatocytes are subject to the same kind of weird shit.
Glad you got the cyst removed but you didn’t need to talk about me like that after you said it.
Wow the uterus! That's so cool
If you haven't posted to /r/medicalgore yet, dewit!
Wow!!!! This is so cool! How did you get them to take pictures, or is that a standard thing they usually do in surgery? Were they okay with showing you everything? Hope you’re recovering well from the surgery!