Endometriosis, inflammatory bowel disease? What are the pathologies that may lead a woman of Kate Middleton's age to need to plan abdominal surgery with an “unusually long” hospital stay and equally extended shooting times? There is secrecy in the UK about the situation of the Princess of Wales. The only thing that seems to have leaked out so far is that It wouldn't be a tumor. “The operations that can be performed at an abdominal level are truly numerous and multiple”, Luigi Boni, full professor of Surgery at the State University of Milan and director of general and minimally invasive surgery at the Polyclinic of the metropolis, told Adnkronos Salute. “But they are significantly reduced if we narrow the field to non-oncological pathologies which could affect younger people and require such a long expected hospital stay”, adds the expert.
“I worked in England, these times are rare”
“I have to tell the truth, I worked in England – he explains – and therefore I know their method of managing patients very well. It's not that the princess's approach changes much. And it is unlikely that patients actually stay hospitalized for that long, these times are rare. It certainly depends on the interventions – Boni points out -. Probably the most accredited hypothesis is that she was operated on for a pathology such as endometriosis, a gynecological disease that typically affects women of childbearing age, a benign pathology that can be mild, but also so severe as to require complex operations affecting various organs. And longer hospitalization times may actually be required than for other pathologies.”
“If for colon cancer the hospital stay in Italy can be on average 5-6 days, and in the United Kingdom 3 – observes the surgeon – severe endometriosis may require intervention on multiple organs, as well as on the uterus and ovaries It can affect the ureters, the intestine, and make a longer stay in hospital necessary. A procedure without complications hardly requires 2 weeks, but to be safe maybe up to 10 days. It also depends on what needs to be done during a intervention. In certain cases it is necessary to do a very important cleaning in several locations, or even remove a segment of intestine, or uterus and appendages”. And “recovery times are also directly proportional to the extent of the operation”. For Kate there is talk of resuming public activities after Easter. The other possibility that is usually in line with these characteristics, Boni indicates, “is an inflammatory bowel disease, such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.”
“It must be said – highlights Boni – that these are chronic diseases for which treatments are usually performed first by doctors, even for a long time. And then afterwards, if one no longer responds to medical therapy, one moves on to surgery. So they are conditions which the patient usually knows he has been suffering from for many years and it is a bit strange that they suddenly emerge with surgery, which is almost never an immediate step. In any case, these are also benign pathologies – he underlines – and if you have to have surgery it is unlikely to require such long stays, but in this case it also depends, obviously.”
Symptoms of the Princess of Wales
In the hours following Buckingham Palace's announcement, analyzes focused on various aspects of the attempt to frame Kate's situation. There are those who have wondered about the thinness of the Princess of Wales, whether it could be correlated with some pathology in particular. It's difficult to say, Boni reflects, specifying that in any case “these are all suppositions. Thinness can be quite typical of intestinal diseases which are often also associated with malnutrition or malabsorption. But even women affected by endometriosis are often thin women, because when the disease affects the intestinal system it causes significant pain. So there is a tendency to eat less.”
“Even endometriosis – the specialist further analyzes – is a pathology that is often treated with medical therapy and the medical therapy is estrogen-progestin treatment, therefore the pill taken on a continuous basis. And it is also true that one of the moments in which the Endometriosis calms down only during pregnancy because the hormonal picture is kept stable”. Another element: “We surgeons – reports Boni – happen to operate on these patients and when they come to surgery they are always insidious cases, because they are more serious conditions that require not simple treatments. But the diagnosis usually occurs first, not rarely at start of the menstrual cycle, although the pathology may be discovered a little late because the complaints range from a very painful to irregular cycle, and other symptoms. It is not uncommon for patients to go from one specialist to another thinking they have other diseases. Today there is more awareness, in GB and also in Italy, but sometimes the diagnosis is not very simple”.
Remembering what little is known about Kate's medical history, the English media then mentioned, in addition to the pregnancies, the time she was hospitalized for severe pregnancy nausea. “However, it is difficult to read this element as a clue. Yes and no, in medicine nothing is ever black or white – reasons Boni – If it is true that for example endometriosis as such calms down during pregnancy, it is also true that when the outbreak of endometriosis stops bleeding and then forms a scar. This scar can also form, for example, in the intestine. And it happens that among the ailments that these patients complain about there is also nausea.”
When and if we will know something
As for Princess Kate, new updates could arrive in the next few days, it has been explained. And we also wonder what the line will be: to say or not to say more about her condition? “All in all, if it were to be a benign pathology – concludes Boni – saying what it is would be a way to increase awareness, as they say in GB”: awareness “about that particular disease and raise awareness among people”.
#Kate #Middleton #underwent #surgery #surgeon39s #hypotheses
