(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Doctors are going to new lengths to eliminate scars from organ removal procedures. Visible scars are becoming a thing of the past as surgeons get creative.

French surgeons recently removed a woman's gallbladder through her vagina, leaving no outward scarring.

"Whenever it was possible, patients would ask for a surgical procedure that left no outer scarring and resulted in no postoperative pain," authors from the study write. "Patients, both male and female, independent of age and body shape, dislike scars, not only for cosmetic reasons but because scars indicate they have undergone treatment because of illness."
 

The patient was a 30-year-old woman. Surgeons performed the procedure with minimally-invasive surgical instruments and removed the gallbladder through the vaginal opening. Doctors report no bleeding or leakage of liver fluids occurred during the three-hour procedure. The patient reported no postoperative pain, and at her follow-up visit 10 days later, she had resumed normal activity with no bleeding or discomfort at the access site.

The procedure has been performed at some other hospitals around the world, including the first in the United States at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

SOURCE: Archives of Surgery from the Journal of the American Medical Association, 2007;142:823-827