Health News

Blog Chatter

What are tags?

List

barbcedatolympia on Government Benefit Programs in Trouble
joakley61 on Court Overturns Passenger Rights Law
pattyd134 on Canseco Calls Out A-Rod in New Book
pop1023 on Red Sox Take Thrilling Japan Opener
wootensunshine on Obama Related to Pitt, Clinton to Jolie

Feed

Top stories submitted and voted on from Propeller.

Doctor Removes Organs to Reach Tumor

CBS News

Posted: 2008-03-25 12:15:35

Filed Under: Health News

(March 24) - "I feel like I'm alive," said 63-year-old Brooke Zepp.

That's something she didn't think she'd be able to say nine months ago. Zepp was diagnosed with a rare and fatal cancerous tumor. It was entangled in arteries and buried so deep in her abdomen it was considered inoperable, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.

Photo Gallery

Joe Skipper, Reuters

A 'Very Tricky'
Operation

1 of 4

In a groundbreaking 15-hour surgery, Dr. Tomoaki Kato removed six organs from patient Brooke Zepp, right, in order to reach a fatal cancerous tumor.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato, a transplant surgeon at the University of Miami, saw it differently.

"If you try to remove the tumor in the usual way, it's going to cause damage to the organs that are supplied by all these arteries," Kato said. "So we just took everything out of the body."

During a groundbreaking 15-hour surgery, Dr. Kato's team opened Zepp's abdomen like the hood of a car and took out the entire engine: her stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver and large and small intestines.

The organs were chilled while surgeons detangled the two-inch tumor from Zepp's aorta, the main blood-supply to those organs - and two other arteries.

Once the tumor was out, the organs, connected to new Gortex blood vessels, went back in.

"I'm shocked looking at it," Kato said. "While we were watching she was like, 'oh my goodness.'"

Now three weeks since the surgery, Zepp is looking at herself from the outside in - grateful that her gamble seems to have paid off.

"I thought it would be better to take a chance on living than on dying soon," she said.

Zepp also said she want to prove to the world that inoperable cancers can be operated on. Her cancer is now gone, and she's heading home.

2008-03-25 09:16:56

Must Read?

96 %

4 %

366 VOTES

Recent Comments

Post Your Own

1 - 10 of 1938

1938 comments

Melvinwhiteside 11:31:32 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

csear10093 you will praise God now or later it is up to you, before you open your eyes in hell you better know that God is real and it is he who enables the doctors and you to move about the way you do, not as the apes and monkeys move who you think is your relatives not mine.

aasianmassage 11:29:35 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

OM MANI PADME HUM.

aasianmassage 11:29:19 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

OM MANI PADME HUM.

BLESSED BE.

hlnwls4 11:27:07 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

Pray that our healthcare system is not one of OBAMA or Hillary - get government OUT OF HEALTHCARE

jcduyal 11:23:40 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU THE US MEDICAL CARE. AND THE SOCIALISTS, CLINTON AND OBAMA - HAND OFF OF IT!!

smoken4555 11:23:32 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

tigerlilly2u...Calm down. The average American is not unaccomplished. Eighty percent of us have a high school diploma and slightly more that 1/3 of us have a four year university degree. We are, in fact, a very hardworking and accomplished nation. In a little over four hundreds years we have managed to create the dominant culture in the world without actually conquering more of it than our own continent. We've pulled Europe's fat out of the fire twice and Asia's once in the last 60 plus years. Is it perfect? Of course not. No human effort is, but there is no other contemporary culture that can compete with us that we didn't start. The EU and Japanese economies are built on our seed money. The Russians and Chinese are rushing to copy everything we've done. Our strength, as well as our weakness, is that we actually believe that we CAN DO it, whatever it is we think we need to do.

Tigerlillyflies 11:23:03 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

Sorry tigerlilly4u but God created man and woman man healed the woman only because God gave him his gift to heal the woman read the word

sapphire5654 11:19:01 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

Tigerlily...you should be ashamed to write such comments. It's people like you to are on their death bed that suddenly believe in God. Is it because you are afraid of where you might be going????

vg3rb 11:18:08 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

Stop eating Mc Donalds

jazteka 11:17:48 PM Mar 25 2008

Report This!

Just would like to know the symtoms of your cancer...I have had many uncomfortable days that doctors can't account for..Help.... what do I have to do?? keep going to Dr after Dr and explain the same damn thing time after time untill someone takes a chance

1 - 10 of 1938

1938 comments