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Appendix-removal via the mouth leaves no scar
Imagine surgery that could be performed without general anaesthetic, requires hardly any recovery time, and leaves you with no visible scars. The catch: it may also leave a very unpleasant taste in your mouth – along with part of your spleen, prostate or perhaps your gall bladder.
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient's mouth to reach the abdominal cavity via an incision made in the stomach lining. Once the operation is over, the surgeon draws any removed tissue back out through the patient's mouth and stitches up the hole in the stomach.
To some it may sound disgusting, to others the prospect of scar-free surgery may sound too good to be true. Either way it's coming. In the past couple of weeks three separate surgical teams say they have carried out NOTES procedures on humans - surgical firsts for both Europe and the US. And doctors in India say they have performed appendectomies through the mouth.
At the Ohio State University Medical Center, in Columbus, US, 10 patients were diagnosed for possible pancreatic cancer using procedures that entered their bodies via their mouths, while two women, one in New York, the other in Strasbourg, France, had their gall bladders removed by surgeons using a variation in the technique – they reached the abdominal cavity through an incision in the vagina.
Like all surgery, NOTES is not without risk – including the possibility of internal bleeding, or post-operative pain caused by inflating the abdominal cavity with carbon dioxide to make it easier to work in. However, the success of the operations may now open the floodgates for large numbers of surgeons who are desperate to try NOTES, making it easier for them to gain ethical approval to try the technique.
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Imagine surgery that could be performed without general anaesthetic, requires hardly any recovery time, and leaves you with no visible scars. The catch: it may also leave a very unpleasant taste in your mouth – along with part of your spleen, prostate or perhaps your gall bladder.
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient's mouth to reach the abdominal cavity via an incision made in the stomach lining. Once the operation is over, the surgeon draws any removed tissue back out through the patient's mouth and stitches up the hole in the stomach.
To some it may sound disgusting, to others the prospect of scar-free surgery may sound too good to be true. Either way it's coming. In the past couple of weeks three separate surgical teams say they have carried out NOTES procedures on humans - surgical firsts for both Europe and the US. And doctors in India say they have performed appendectomies through the mouth.
At the Ohio State University Medical Center, in Columbus, US, 10 patients were diagnosed for possible pancreatic cancer using procedures that entered their bodies via their mouths, while two women, one in New York, the other in Strasbourg, France, had their gall bladders removed by surgeons using a variation in the technique – they reached the abdominal cavity through an incision in the vagina.
Like all surgery, NOTES is not without risk – including the possibility of internal bleeding, or post-operative pain caused by inflating the abdominal cavity with carbon dioxide to make it easier to work in. However, the success of the operations may now open the floodgates for large numbers of surgeons who are desperate to try NOTES, making it easier for them to gain ethical approval to try the technique.
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