Researchers have identified what they are calling a brand new organ inside the human body.
It’s called the mesentery and it’s found within the digestive system where the gut connects to the body.
The mesentery is a fold of the peritoneum that attaches the stomach, small intestine, pancreas, spleen, and other organs to the back wall of the abdomen.
For hundreds of years this area of the body was overlooked because it was considered to be made up of multiple separate parts.
But the review published in the November issue of the journal The Lancet Gastroenterology and Heptology outlined evidence for categorizing the parts as one organ.
“The anatomic description that had been laid down over 100 years of anatomy was incorrect. This organ is far from fragmented and complex. It is simply one continuous structure," lead author Professor John Calvin Coffey said in a statement.
The researchers from University of Limerick in Ireland hope that the reclassification will lead to a better understanding of the organ and abdominal diseases.
“This is relevant universally as it affects all of us,” said Coffey, the Foundation Chair of Surgery at UL's Graduate Entry Medical School and University Hospitals Limerick. “Now we have established anatomy and the structure. The next step is the function. If you understand the function you can identify abnormal function, and then you have disease."
He hopes that this new understanding will also help improve surgery in this area. Future research could mean cheaper, less invasive surgeries with fewer complications and better patient recovery.
But it’s still very early days and the mesentery’s specific function is still unknown.
Even still, the widely used medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy, has already been updated to reflect the change in classification. So going forward medical students around the world will now be learning about the mesentery as one continuous organ.
