The mesentery has been around for a long, long time. It was first classified by a British surgeon in 1885, but he thought it wasn’t found in adults, an opinion that stayed in medical textbooks for more than a century. But, it turns out, we not only all have a mesentery, it might be a crucial overlooked organ in the human system. Yes, medicine missed an organ until now. Hey, science changes all the time!
So, what the heck is a mesentery? Essentially, it’s what attaches your intestines to your body, and holds your gastrointestinal system in place. More importantly, though, it’s a structure that ties together your insides. You might remember in school you were taught the small intestine, the large intestine, and your butthole (That’s a scientific term, right?) were basically separate organs? They aren’t, and the mesentery is what ties them all together and supports them. Think of the mesentery as, among other things, the scaffolding that keeps your intestines from falling into your crotch.
“OK,” you might be thinking, “That’s neat for doctors, but what about me?” The short answer is that viewing the mesentery as an organ might help doctors understand a range of uncomfortable, painful, and even fatal conditions. Crohn’s Disease, for example, might be a disease that primarily affects the mesentery and the, uh, more notable and voluble symptoms are just a nasty bonus. Treating the mesentery like an organ appears to have raised the survival rates of colon cancer patients.
It also lends itself to a different approach to your stomach. If the digestive tract is one continuous organ, that means it should be treated very differently than a pile of organs that happen to interact with each other. The real change, long term, might be in how everyone views their health, and that might be the most effective change of all.
(Via ScienceAlert)