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- Surgery may be done to remove damaged areas of the lungs if drug treatments fail for XDR TB.
- Speaker got lung surgery on July 17 to remove parts of his lung affected by TUBERCULOSIS. The operation was performed at the University of Colorado Hospital at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo., by John D. MITCHELL, MD, chief of general thoracic surgery at the University of Colorado Hospital.
- Speaker's operation was done with a minimally invasive technique called video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS).
- In VATS, surgeons access the lung through a 2-inch incision in the patient's side, as well as two incisions (each 1-centimeter long) for SURGICAL instruments and a TINY, fiber optic camera.
- The infected part of Speaker's lung has been described as roughly the size of a tennis ball, notes the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
- Marvin Pomerantz, MD, director of the Center for the Surgical Treatment of Lung Infections at the University of Colorado at Denver Health Sciences Center, tells WebMD that he wouldn’t CALL lung surgery a last resort.
- “I'd call it part of the overall treatment of the difficult cases of tuberculosis," with more antibiotic treatment after the operation, Pomerantz says.
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