Duke surgeon transplants first abdominal wall in North Carolina

A team of surgeons successfully completed North Carolina's first abdominal wall transplant, according to The Chronicle.

When Jonathan Nauta, former Army drill sergeant from Fayetteville, N.C., was a child his appendix burst.The leftover scar tissue caused three life-threatening intestinal blockages.  

When Mr. Nauta was admitted to Durham, N.C.-based Duke University Hospital, he had depended on feeding tubes and waste bags for years up to his surgery. He was unable to eat due to his damaged bowels leaking intestinal fluids onto his abdominal wall.

Mr. Nauta's situation could only be fixed with a simultaneous transplantation of the abdominal wall and intestines. The surgical team  restored blood flow to the area by creating a seperate blood source through the abdominal wall to a blood vessel in the groin, according The Chronicle.

Kadiyala Ravindra, MD, an abdominal transplant surgeon, and Detlev Erdmann, MD, a plastic surgeon, planned the procedure. The surgery took 14 hours and used an extra 23 physicians, nurses and staff.

"There are many more patients in Mr. Nauta’s scenario, where doctors and patients don’t know what to do. So patients are told, 'Sorry, we can’t help you'," Dr. Erdmann told The Chronicle. "So we have a solution for these patients, which is an organ transplantation simultaneous to an abdominal wall transplantation."

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