ONE MORE DIFFERENTIAL FOR MR CHAVEZ ILLNESS: TERATOCARCINOMA

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is presently in Cuba preparing to undergo another surgical procedure for the illness that led me write a short op-ed piece here back in July 2011. As a matter of background, the onset of the illness was dated to mid-2011. Various pundits and commentators, some of them physicians, noted that a prostatic illness or cancer was unlikely, a colon malignancy was questioned, and a bladder malignancy did not fit the available history. Indeed, there has not been a single medical report or medical press conference on Mr. Chavez’s illness. Chavez himself has delivered or read some reports, but nothing too technical and usually incomplete. Others have proposed that Mr. Chavez is suffering from a sarcomatous tumor, either a benign or somewhat malignant sarcoma for example. But again, the management for this type of lesion often involves radiation first and surgery later. Mr. Chavez was treated with surgery and then repeated courses of chemotherapy that left him with a shaved scalp and generalized swelling. One further possibility can be added, again in view of the scarcity of official medical data. The tumor or illness at hand threatening Mr. Chavez health fits the clinical picture of a teratocarcinoma. The latter type of tumor has a number of cell lines, hence the importance of Mr. Chavez in pointing out that there were “células carcinógenas.” The original pathology probably revealed a low percentage of neoplastic, aggressive cells. The bulk of the tumor was removed and chemotherapy was expected to do away with the remainder malignant cells. However, at this time, Mr. Chavez likely has a recurrence of the tumor arising from the most malignant and aggressive neoplastic cells that escaped the previously applied treatment.Furthermore, the recurrence of such a type of tumor suggests that Mr. Chavez may be suffering from an immune disorder. Exactly, he may be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This in itself explains the secrecy of the entire process, the avoidance of Venezuelan health centers and medical professionals and the negation to go to Brazil for management and cancer treatment. In short, we propose to rule out TERATOCARCINOMA in the presence of HIV infection in the case of Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez. Dr. Antonio Gordon