Surgeon at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center removes kidney through bellybutton

by PegNews wire

A surgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas says he's the first to have done a unique kind of surgery in which he removed a patient's kidney through the belly button. Yuck!

Completing the entire procedure with only one incision means the patient will have a less-noticeable scar. Which seems sortof superficial, but the surgeon, one Jeffrey Cadeddu, says that laparoscopic surgery not only gives patients smaller incisions, it also gives them less pain and a faster recovery. He used a newly developed set of high-dexterity instruments that make it easy to operate regardless of whether the appliance is positioned over, under or around internal organs.

Here's an interesting factoid: The removal of a kidney is called a "nephrectomy."

Posted by T.G.