Emmanuel Zayas, 14, has passed away after a team of specialists attempted to remove a 10-pound tumor from his face.
The Zayas family is from the town of Villa Clara, in central Cuba. Around the time Emmanuel entered puberty at the age of 11, he developed a grown on his nose, which he and his family believed to be a pimple. However, as the months and years went on, they realized they needed an expert. Unfortunately, the family couldn’t find a surgeon who knew how to help their son on the island, so they travelled to Miami.
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As previously reported, Zayas came into contact with Dr. Robert Marx, chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery at University of Miami Health System, who offered to help.
Marx has removed similar tumors before, and is one of the few experts in the country known to do so. He announced in December that he and a group of other specialists would perform a surgery, lasting 10 to 14 hours, in hopes of removing the ten pound tumor from Zayas’ face. The operation took place at Holtz Children’s Hospital at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Medical Center.
The tumor was so large that it impeded Zayas’ breathing, and made it extremely difficult and painful for him to eat. As a result, he was severely undernourished, a factor that Marx believes may have contributed to the surgery’s failure. Zayas’ weakened system and “compromised anatomy” simply couldn’t handle the stress of the prolonged operation and the recovery afterward.
Marx announced that the operation had failed in a lengthy post on Facebook.
He thanked the public for their support, thoughts and prayers throughout the process, and offered his condolences to the Zayas family. He noted that young Emmanuel’s body was being donated to medical research, in the hopes of better understanding and preventing similar tragedies in the future. He wrote that the Zayas family “finds comfort” in this sacrifice.
