You can live without a stomach

This week we started dissecting the abdomen. We cut through all the layers of muscle holding our abdominal wall in place and protecting our organs, including the rectus abdominis (yeah six pack!), and several layers on the side like the external obliques, internal obliques and transversus abdominis muscles (yeah new words!).


Today, we started looking for the liver, stomach, spleen, pancreas, gall bladder and the veins and arteries running to and from these organs. Well.... to make a long story short: SHE HAS NO STOMACH! Crazy. Luckily, a wonderful thoracic surgeon happened to be in lab today and described the full gastrectomy that removed her stomach, spleen and the greater omentum that covers these organs. The pictures below helps to explain how the surgeons removed her stomach and hooked up her esophagus to her small intestine. Needless to say, we had a rough time in lab identifying all of the abdominal viscera because everything was shifted, reconnected and unexpected!




Here is a blog entry from a person living with a full gastrectomy: Living with a Gastrectomy: One Researcher's Experience.