Woman has vagina repaired with pig intestine in groundbreaking surgery
A Czech woman who suffered from a rare skin disease called scleroderma has had her critically narrow vagina widened using a graft from a pig’s intestine.
The woman went to the gynecologist for help after sex became physically impossible. The gynecologist then sent the woman to hospital after finding the vagina so constricted that it was impossible to conduct an examination. Scledroderma is a condition that hardens and thickens affected areas of skin. When contracted internally, the disease often leads to problems with organs and blood vessels.
Doctors at University Hospital in Plzen, a city in the western part of the Czech Republic, thus attempted the world’s first Mesh Augmentation on a vagina. Previously, the technique–in which tissue sometimes taken from humans, and sometimes from pigs, depending on availability–was performed “on women who have suffered a pelvic organ prolapse and who are experiencing symptoms such as urinary incontinence.” The surgery–in which organic tissue is placed in a mesh structure atop the weakened area, and then allowed to grow naturally–has only ever been performed on bladders.
Pig tissue can be used because, genetically speaking, it is quite similar to that of humans.
Said Dr. Vladimir Kalis, head OBGYN at the hospital:
In the case of the patient we operated on, she had been given various medications by her gynaecologist but nothing helped, so she referred to us….The material used is referred to as pig net. Its thickness is about one millimetre. Over time human tissue will be created around the net and the pig net will be absorbed by the body….And although we have advised her not to engage in sexual activity at the moment, she should be able to recover a full and active sex life in about two years. Basically, she feels like a woman again.
As is often the case after such unusual procedures, the doctors involved in the surgery plan to publish a paper detailing the procedure and its results.
What do you think, folks? Would you go through with such a procedure to restore normal function? If you were planning on having some sort of pork for a romantic Valentine’s dinner tonight, do you now want to reconsider? Does this bring a whole new meaning to the term “porking”?
(Photo credits: WENN; Steffen via Flickr)
