New human organ discovered by Irish surgeon

An Irish surgeon’s breakthrough overturned more than a century of medical belief and may lead to improvements in digestive surgery and recovery.

The mesentery, it turns out, is one connected organ, not a disjointed group of separate parts, a theory believed since the 19th Century. The mesentery connects the intestine to the abdomen.

J. Calvin Coffey, a professor at the University of Limerick, reclassified the mesentery after discovering it was contiguous. His findings were published in November in the medical journal The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.