Surgeon Calvin Coffey at University Hospital Limerick spent years dissecting and imaging the structure during colorectal operations, tracing its tissue layers from one end of the intestine to the other.
Coffey and colleague Peter O'Leary found the mesentery was not fragmented at all. It formed one continuous sheet of tissue running from the small intestine down through the colon, connected the whole way, a structure no 20th-century anatomy atlas had drawn correctly.
The reclassification opened mesenteric science as its own research area, with investigators now studying the tissue's role in Crohn's disease, colorectal cancer, and metabolic conditions. Surgeons have since adjusted how they describe and approach the tissue during bowel operations, treating it as one organ rather than scattered connective material.
Read the original study
An organ had been hiding in plain sight.
Source
- Coffey, J. C., & O'Leary, D. P. (2016). The mesentery: structure, function, and role in disease. The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 1(3), 238–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-1253(16)30026-7