14 DAY TRIAL // This is really remarkable: a woman had all her abdominal organs removed, for the extirpation of a tumor. Brooke Zepp, 63, from South Florida, was found, in May 2007, to have leiomyosarcoma, a rare cancer type, located deep inside her abdomen. The tumor had wrapped itself around woman's aorta and other arteries delivering blood to vital organs like the stomach, intestines and spleen.
Doctors refused to operate saying that the abdominal space was too tight for the tumor to be removed without harming vital organs. Confronted with the perspective of waiting her death in 6 months, the woman appealed to a team at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center, who premiered the outstanding surgery.
"I wanted to prove to people, even though many doctors told me not to do this, that I thought it would be better to take a chance on living than on dying," said Zepp.
In March 2008, the team removed six abdominal organs of Brooke to get the space required for cutting off the tumor. "In order to remove the tumor, we took a very unusual approach. We removed all the organs along with the blood vessels and the tumor," said Dr Andreas Tzakis, director of The Transplant Institute.
The tumor had proven resistant to chemotherapy and radiation.
"The organs removed during the 15-hour surgery were the stomach, pancreas, liver, spleen, small intestine and about two-thirds of the large intestine. Because of their delicate nature, the kidneys weren't taken out during the procedure. We had to move very quickly because the organs were removed from her body and she had no organs in the belly," said Tzakis.
"Once the tumor had been removed, Zepp's organs - which had been kept chilled - were placed back in her abdominal cavity and artificial blood vessels were put in and connected. In total, the organs were outside her body for about 90 minutes," he added.
The team had experience with multiple organ transplants.
"This is unique and brand-new, but pieces of the surgery were done before. We know how to remove organs - we know how to put them in. We've done surgery to remove liver tumors, taking the liver out of the body, removing the tumor and putting the liver back in. The Miami doctors have also performed similar operations removing tumors from intestines. We've done pieces, we just hadn't done the entire thing at one time," said Tzakis.
The state of the patient is good.
"I want the rest of the world to know that inoperable cancers can be operated on. Different cancer centers have different training and their own vision, and they don't think in the terms that a transplant surgeon would," she said.