BETTER SURGERY

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1939, Page 5

BETTER SURGERY

NEW AMERICAN PROCESS SAN FRANCISCO. March 14. A surgical process has been evolved which gives the patient a better than three to one recovery chance instead of the old one to three odds when certain dangerous complications develop in stomach operations.

Dr. Carl R. Hoag. San Francisco surgeon, and Dr. John B. Saunders, University ofc California anatomist, developed the process. It was explained to I the profession in the current issue of “Surgery. Gyneacology and Obstet- [ rics,” a medical publication. It is a supplemental operation, performed not less than seven days after the initial surgery, by which the doctor improves upon his first work if by that time improvement is considered necessary. In initial stomach operations, which usually are for ulcer or cancer, the. surgeon cuts away the diseased part. Frequently this involves removal of tissue at or near the stomach’s outlet. To rebuild the digestive organ and provide it with a healthy new outlet, the surgeon doubles a length of the small intestine. He attaches this end to the stomach, either by joining it to the place where diseased tissue was removed, or by making a new cut in the bottom of the food-receiving organ and inserting the doubled end like a stopper.

The cut in the intestine then serves as the new stomach outlet. The surgeon cannot tell whether this new- outlet Will work until the stomach and intestines ’ start again their normal function of rolling and contracting to keep food moving. The digestive system will not so function while the patient is under anaesthetics. The rolling and contracting incidentally furnish the greatest hazard thereafter because those motions may close the newly-made outlet and thus stop digestion, which is sure to be fatal unless corrected. Nausea in the patient gives the surgeon his cue for the Hoag-Saunders operation, which is called a jejuiioplasty.