Colectomies Galore

One of the days last week that I was shadowing surgery had two Colectomies in a row, in which a portion of large intestine needed to be removed and reconnected (anastamosed). It was interesting because I got to see two very different approaches to anastamosis.

The first case was a patient who had a very large volvulus, or twist, in the ascending colon. A volvulus can occur in the ascending or descending colon, because those portions are fixed at the hepatic and splenic flexures (respectively) and the lower portion is hanging freely, with the potential to get twisted about itself. The volvulus was pretty big, about a foot long and 1/3 of a foot in diameter. After it was clipped off on both sides and removed, there were two pieces of colon that needed to be anastamosed and those were connected the same way I mentioned in the previous entry.

The second case was a patient who had had an emergent colectomy and colostomy bag put in, without a reanastamosis, so in this case they were going back in to finish up the colectomy, and anastamose the pieces to the rectum. The difference in this case is there is not enough room by the rectum for a surgeon to work very easily with his hands and clips, so instead they did the majority of the procedure laparoscopically. Once they had prepared the colon end that they wished to connect to the rectum, they inserted a circular disk with a metal male port perpendicularly. This produced an end of intestine that had a circular disk within the very end, and through the center (where the lumen would be) the male prong was sticking out. They then took another circular disk, except with a female port, and pushed it up the rectum to the point that they wished to create the new lumen and pushed the prong through the wall of the intestine at that point. They laparoscopically connected the two ports, producing a metal connecting rod between the two disks. The metal connector then approximated the two disks, to the point that there was a seal between the two parts of the intestine. The disks then cauterized the area and the entire apparatus was removed, leaving in its place a new lumen created between the sigmoid and the rectum for bowel contents to bypass the area that had been removed. I had never heard of this type of procedure before, so I was kind of clueless as to what was going on for the first half hour of the procedure. Mental note: Find a page later to link to procedures so that it's easier to understand what I am describing...

Well, more surgery clinic appointments today - I should also be meeting the new PA student from Touro who will be sharing my preceptor for the rest of my rotation.