Healthy Kidney Removed Through Donor's Vagina
ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — In what is believed to be a first-ever procedure, surgeons at Johns Hopkins have successfully removed a healthy donor kidney through a small incision in the back of the donor’s vagina.
“The kidney was successfully removed and transplanted into the donor’s niece, and both patients are doing fine,” says Robert Montgomery, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the transplant division at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the team that performed the historic operation.
The transvaginal donor kidney extraction, performed Jan. 29 on a 48-year-old woman from Lexington Park, Md., eliminated the need for a 5-to-6-inch abdominal incision and left only three pea-size scars on her abdomen, one of which is hidden in her navel.
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The Jan. 29 operation is one of a family of new surgical procedures called natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgeries (NOTES) that use a natural body opening to remove organs and tissue, according to Anthony Kalloo, M.D., the director of the Division of Gastroenterology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the pioneer of NOTES. The most common openings used are the mouth, anus and vagina.
Sydney Brillo Duodenum NOTES that it is only a matter of time before some genius decides that the elastic properties of the male urethra are sufficient to support these types of procedures in the future.
