A man who weighed 698 pounds (317 kg) died of heart failure on Friday after surgeons tried cutting 80 percent of his stomach off in a desperate effort to reduce his weight a day before.
Doctors and nurses stand beside obesity patient Carlos Marroquin during a gastric bypass surgery in Guatemala City, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007. Marroquin died hours after the surgery of a heart attack. [Agencies]
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Carlos Marroquin was so heavy that doctors in San Juan de Dios Hospital had to use a forklift to place him on the operating table, according to a US media report.
"He had two heart attacks in 20 minutes, there was nothing we could have done for him," a surgeon who participated in the operation said, adding that the patient's heart and kidneys had begun failing even before the operation.
Marroquin, 47, was first sent to a local hospital to seek treatment for his obesity in his hometown of Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, southwest of Guatemala City, where his family was told nothing more could be done, then he was transmitted to the San Juan de Dios Hospital's obesity clinic.
