Lodged behind several organs and attached to arteries, the lemon-sized tumor in Brooke Zepp’s abdomen appeared to be inoperable. It was malignant and out of reach.
But on Monday, Ms. Zepp watched in awe as doctors at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center explained how they detached and removed six of her organs, cut out the cancerous tumor, then reassembled her insides. With a video of the March 4 operation on display at a news conference here, she wiped away tears and said: “I feel like I’m coming through the tunnel and I have a whole life.”
Her doctors smiled with pride. The surgery lasted 15 hours and was one of the first to involve taking so many organs out of the body: the stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, small intestine and two-thirds of the large intestine...
Dr. Tzakis said doctors essentially had to empty Ms. Zepp’s abdomen. Then they cut out the tumor and its attached blood vessels in a matter of minutes.
Next, the team sewed in white Gore-Tex tubes to replace involved sections of the arteries, and went to work putting Ms. Zepp back together. The removed organs sat in a large, square metal tin — roughly the size of a turkey pan — for about 90 minutes before the surgeons began to reinsert and reattach them. In the video, they could be seen sloshing in cool water, like leftover soup.
-Doctors Remove 6 Organs, Then Cut Out a Tumor
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