LONDON: Doctors have performed what they say is Europe’s first hysterectomy on a woman through a tiny incision in her belly button, leaving no visible scars.
The technique, known as single-incision laparoscopic surgery, is the latest development in keyhole surgery, where instruments are inserted through the belly button, including a tiny camera, and surgeons maneuver inside using a television monitor.
Surgeon Thomas Ind, who led the team that performed the hysterectomy – the surgical removal of the uterus – on a woman named Debbie Price, said the method was just an extension of what was already being done with the keyhole method.
���Instead of making three or four tool holes, we only make one hole. Patients like the idea of not having three or four small scars on their stomach,��� he said. Price, 46, decided to have the surgery after years of suffering from adenomyosis, a painful condition in which the lining of the uterus grows into the muscle of the uterus.
