Half-tonne man seeks life-saving surgery in Italy (Reuters)

ROME (Reuters) - A Mexican man who at 1,212 pounds is possibly the heaviest person in the world hopes to soon travel to Italy for a life-saving operation on his small intestine that would allow him to shed weight.

Manuel Uribe, bedridden for the past 5 years, cannot stand on his own and will need a special flight to take him from Monterrey, Mexico to a hospital in Modena, Italy, where a surgical team has offered to treat him.

"I can't walk. I'm can't leave my bed," Uribe, age 40, said in a telephone interview.

"I'm in the process of trying to reduce my weight a bit right now so I can be in the right condition for the operation."

Uribe made an impassioned plea for help earlier this year shown on Mexican television, saying he had weighed a more normal 287 pounds until aged 22 and did not know what happened to him.

Part of the broadcast was retransmitted on Italian state television and drew the attention of doctor Giancarlo De Bernardinis, who travelled to Mexico in March with a small team, including an anesthetist, to examine Uribe.

Bernardinis, whose biggest patient to date weighed 772 pounds, told Reuters he plans a gall-bladder, intestinal bypass procedure that he says will allow Uribe to pass food more quickly without so many calories being absorbed.

Bernardinis said he planned to perform the surgery in Modena as early as this month, but a Mexican health official doubted Uribe would be ready for a trip to Europe that quickly.

MEDICAL WONDER

Uribe's case is still a medical mystery of sorts since his cholesterol levels are normal, as are his blood-sugar levels, despite his extreme obesity.

"His heart works very well. He has some respiratory difficulty because of his obesity, but in strict terms, he's well," said Marco Anibal Rodriguez Vargas, the director of hospitals in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon.

Doctors who have visited Uribe estimate he weighs about 1,212 pounds -- roughly the weight of five baby elephants.

As is common with extreme obesity, no one has managed to find a suitable scale for Uribe in years, however, and estimates are made partly by tape-measure.

He said Mexican hospitals still had hope of treating Uribe themselves, but added Uribe would ultimately decide what to do.

When asked by Reuters, Uribe said it was just a matter of time before he went to Italy: "Are we going? Yes. We're going. But the doctors will decide when."

Bernardinis said the operation would last four to five hours and would likely require Uribe to spend one month in Italy before returning to Mexico.

"He will always be heavier than normal but certainly not like he is now ... We would be satisfied even if he weighed 150 kilos (330 pounds) after two years," Bernardinis said.

For Uribe, that would be a welcome change. He is just shy of becoming the heaviest man ever to live -- a record currently held by Jon Brower Minnoch, who died in Seattle in 1983 after reaching a record 1,400 pounds. He was in his early 40s.

Uribe, who turns 41 in July, said he hopes to avoid that fate. But his wife, horrified by his increasing size, feared for the worst and abandoned him more than a decade ago.

"She left me because she must have thought I was dying, because I was very bad off," Uribe said.

"Thank God, I'm still alive and hopefully will be able to take care of this problem."