Scar-free Appendectomy

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- An inflamed or diseased appendix can be deadly if not removed quickly. Traditional appendectomy surgery leaves patients with incision scars and pain from recovery, but surgeons at the University of California - San Diego have successfully performed an appendectomy without the major incision!

A two to three inch scar on the right side of a person’s abdomen is usually a telltale sign they’ve had their appendix removed. But a new technique could change that. On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, surgeons performed the United States’ first appendectomy through the mouth -- leaving the patient with no scarring, less pain and a shorter recovery time.

Called Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES), surgeons insert small instruments through a natural opening -- in this case, the mouth -- and a tiny camera put through a small incision made in the belly button to guide them to the desired organ.

“A day after surgery, I have little pain, a ‘2’ on a scale of 1 to 10,” Jeff Scholz, the surgery patient, was quoted as saying. “My father had the conventional appendix removal. I didn’t want the standard issue scar on the abdomen.”

The UC San Diego team is no stranger to NOTES surgery. In September, 2007, the same doctors removed a woman’s gallbladder through her vagina using the same surgery technique. Both surgeries are a part of ongoing clinical trials testing the NOTES procedure.

“The purpose of this clinical trial is to test more ‘patient-focused’ techniques for minimally invasive surgery,” Mark A. Talamini, M.D., one of the surgeons involved in both NOTES surgeries and professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at UC San Diego Medical Center, was quoted as saying.

SOURCE: The University of California - San Diego