By Alexandra Thompson Senior Health Reporter For Mailonline
Published: 10:25 BST, 6 June 2019 | Updated: 10:25 BST, 6 June 2019
View
comments
A farmer had a 6cm-long black 'horn' curving out of her thumb that was eventually removed by surgeons.
The unnamed 60-year-old went to hospital in India after five years after the tough growth first started to project from her right digit.
Doctors diagnosed the 6x1cm growth as a giant cutaneous horn (CH), in what is thought to be the first ever case on a patient's thumb.
Cutaneous horns occur because of a build-up of keratin, the same protein that forms hair, skin and nails.
Medics removed the harmless horn, reporting that the woman was doing well one-and-a-half years after the procedure.
A farmer had a black 'horn' curving out of her thumb (pictured). Doctors diagnosed the 6x1cm growth as a cutaneous horn (CH) in what is thought to be the first case on a patient's thumb
Medics removed the horn (pictured), with the woman doing well one-and-a-half years later
The woman was treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Jodhpur by Dr Ranjit Kumar Sahu, of the department of burns and plastic surgery.
CHs resemble the horn of an animal but without the underlying bone that antlers have, Dr Sahu wrote in BMJ Case Reports.
They can be benign or malignant, with cancerous CHs typically being painful, thicker than they