How Well Do You Know Your Organs? The Mesentery Is Now Classified As Organ That Requires Further Study

How well do you know your organs? Well an Irish surgeon Prof. J. Calvin Coffey at the University of Limerick may have changed some of our medical belief. He published a paper last November in medical journal; The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology and it basically says the mesentery (previously believed to be separate parts) is actually one organ in the body that connects the intestine to the abdomen.

While the discovery didn’t say much about the potential advantage the new organ to the human body, it does mean though that this could lead to improved medical procedures like shorter patient recovery and less complications which directly translates shorter time in the hospital and as you know, time is money and if you need less of the surgeon’s time, it potentially could mean lower costs for you too.

Prof. J. Calvin Coffey in his paper titled “The mesentery: structure, function, and role in disease” also said “Clarification of mesenteric anatomy will have many benefi ts for colorectal surgery. Surgery can be more systematised, which in turn will allow tailoring of educational information and lead to standardisation of the surgical process. Systematisation will also facilitate rigorously controlled randomised trials, which have long been called for but have not so far been possible.”

Seeing as the mesentery plays such an important role in the body, further work on the study is required to learn more and in conclusion, he said “Whether the mesentery should be viewed as part of the intestinal, vascular, endocrine, cardiovascular, or immunological systems is so far unclear, as it has important roles in them all. Its effects are being investigated at haematological, immunological, endocrine, metabolic, and other levels. Many, but not all, organs have a distinct functional unit. The functional unit of the mesentery is unknown, and whether a distinctive cell type is primarily responsible for its functionality should be investigated.”

Now the study on the mesentery subject goes back to the Da Vinci days when the organ was depicted as a contiguous but now Prof Coffey says the next big step would be to determine what the organ actually does.