Eman Ahmed Abd El Aty, an Egyptian woman, once believed the heaviest female in the world, died this Monday morning in a United Arab Emirates hospital, shortly after her 37th birthday.

The “world’s heaviest woman” passed away at 4:35 A.M. according to a statement from the Burjeel Hospital, where she was treated for four months. She succumbed to “complications from underlying comorbid conditions, including heart disease and kidney dysfunction,” the statement said.

Image credit: People
Image credit: People

Ms. Abd El Aty suffered from Hypertension, hyperthyroidism, gout, diabetes, severe sleep apnea, and pressure sores. According to the World Health Organization guidelines, people whose body mass index, or BMI, are higher than 30 are considered obese, but Abd El Aty BMI was 252, making her severely obese.

She did not survive despite all the weight she lost

Weighing 504 kg (1111.13 pounds), Ms. Ahamed’s state of health was so severe she had not been able to move since the last 25 years. To get better, she had traveled this February from her home in Alexandria, Egypt, to Mumbai, India, for a bariatric weight loss surgery, and to treat her rare thyroid condition that affected her metabolism and her respiratory system as a consequence.

Bariatric surgeries are performed on dangerously obese people who need to lose weight very rapidly. In the process, doctors reduce the size of the stomach and the space the organ has to allow food. According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, this way the patient who undergoes this surgery satisfies its hunger faster than a regular person, making it eat less than others.

She underwent bariatric surgery – which often involves the fitting of a gastric band or the removal of a portion of the stomach – and was put on a liquid diet.

The medical process was so efficient on her, she lost the impressive amount of 254 kg (559.974 pounds) comparing when she left her house in Alexandria. Unfortunately, doctors determined that her obesity condition couldn’t be completely treated it with surgery and that any other solution would be more risky for her.

Image credit: Yahoo! News
Image credit: Yahoo! News

The time she was transferred to Abu Dhabi

Although the tremendous advances, her family was not as happy as some people expected them to be.

Ms. Abd El Aty was able to travel and go under surgery thanks to an online campaign her sister did on her behalf. After Mumbai, she was transferred on May to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, because her family accused Saifee hospital doctors of not doing well their work. They expressed the former heaviest woman wasn’t losing weight as she was supposed to despite the fact that she submitted herself into such expensive surgeries.

20 specialists accepted to treat her in Abu Dhabi and planned a series of dedicated operations that would hopefully safe Ms. Abd El Aty’s life and controlled her obesity. However, she suffered on Friday of many complications – that haven’t been publicly said -, leading doctors to announce her dead this Monday morning.

Abd El Aty’s comorbid conditions were being successfully treated as the hospital’s medical director in Abu Dhabi, Dr. Nabeel Debouni, told at the moment of her entrance to Burjeel Hospital, in May. However, he added that her condition had worsened without saying why exactly.

“Eman Abdul Atti… had been under the supervision of a medical team of over 20 doctors from different specialities who were managing her medical condition from the time she arrived in the UAE.” Burjeel Hospital staff in Abu Dhabi said on the statement. “Our prayers and heartfelt condolences go out to her family.”

The results after the bariatric surgery

Because Ms. Abd El Aty wasn’t able to move from her bed, locals constructed a special one with wheels that facilitated her mobility from her house to the hospital.

She was first put on blood thinners to reduce the risk of a pulmonary embolism. Later, the workers – as they are seen in a video taken by them at the moment – lifted the bed with special equipment and took the woman from the bed out of her home In Alexandria through a window.

On April, Abd El Aty had lost 550 pounds in total after she underwent into a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy, allowing her to sit in a wheelchair. According to her family, it was “something we never dreamt of 3 months back.”

Doctors considered she was “fit to fly” again after the family asked them to transfer Abd El Aty again, according to her blog. She was later moved to the UAE hospital.

After ten weeks she arrived in Abu Dhabi, she spoke for the first time in three years. Mental health doctors examined her and determined that she suffered from severe depression.

The first goal Abu Dhabi doctors set was to make Abd El Aty’ able to undergo liposuction and excess skin-removal surgery after all the series of operation they planned, estimating that she would be ready to return to Alexandria, easier than when she first arrived Mumbai, within a year.

Source: The Washington Post