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Monday, February 9, 2009

Why remove a kidney through the vagina?

No, it's not the opening to a joke, they really did this.
in this Scientific American article they explain the benefits 'natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery' or NOTES.

How is the new NOTES procedure done?
You make a six-inch incision in the back of the vaginal wall and insert one flexible tube that contains four channels through which you insert surgical instruments and cameras. Then you dissect upwards toward the kidney, which is located midway up the back. Dissecting means you are using scissors to open up layers of tissue, called fascial planes, to get to the kidney. Separating these layers of tissue feels like peeling away layers of cotton candy. Once you get to the kidney, you identify blood vessels supplying it with blood, put clips on the vessels so they don't bleed, and cut them free from the kidney. (The clips are actually left in the body after the surgery.) To remove the organ, doctors might use the "Roth Net" retrieval net, which is like a collapsible butterfly net. You thread the Roth Net through the tube, which opens up on the other side and "catches" the kidney like a net capturing a butterfly. Then kidney is pulled through the vaginal incision.

[Instead of using the Roth Net, the Hopkins team actually used a sterile plastic bag to extract the kidney, according to Allaf. The bag is similar to the Roth Net in that it slides through a narrow tube, opens at the end and captures the kidney.]

Wow!

1 comment:

susan said...

Great surgical skills....Vaginal hysterectomies have been done for years. No major abdominal muscles involved, faster healing. When my dad had a kidney removed, he was sliced spirally across his entire abdomen..kinda like a cardboard refrigerated dough container.....to bad he didn't have a vagina!! But that was many years ago.