We all know that we have all sorts of lungs, intestines, liver, brain and so on. But it turns out that experts have not yet come to a single what exactly can be considered an organ. That is, it is not yet clear how many of them do we have. But the most important thing is that everything works, right?
In the 20-10s, there were many publications in scientific journals, where suggested that different parts of the body also be recorded in the category of organs.
Interstitium
It is a network of connective tissue cavities filled with tissue fluid. Scientists decades ago described interstitium, but what role does it play if it is, in fact, just empty place?
In 2018, it was found that this mesh of cavities, penetrating the whole body, absorbs the impact from the outside, that is, to protect from blows to internal organs. If the body has such cavities, This means that different cells can more or less freely move between them. Including cancer cells.
tubular glands
Situation: after a course of radiation therapy, the doctor informs his patient that his laryngeal cancer had gone into remission. The patient walks happily celebrate such an event in some institution and cannot swallow a single piece. It's all because of the disorder of the act of swallowing - dysphagia. And the reason maybe just a violation of the tubular salivary glands. This clusters of cells in the center of the head, between the nasal cavity and the throat, which can be seriously injured during radiation therapy.
They became known from 1837, but they were not considered important. for a person. In 2020, scientists found that radiation causes dysphagia.
Tubular glands lubricate the upper part of the throat without this Lubricants are very hard to swallow. Since these glands are responsible for the occurrence of dysphagia, the authors of the study recommend considering them "an organ in danger." But so far officially their body has not recognized.
Mesentery
In a number of studies, it is called an organ, but for a long time it was it is not clear whether this is one organ or several. It runs along the intestine and responsible for the quality of his work. Descriptions of the mesentery can be seen in literature of the 16th century. It was also mentioned by Leonardo da Vinci. It is he wrote that it is a single whole, but the mesentery is located in the intestine so interesting that you can see the connection of segments only when extracting it in a special way.
Professor of the Royal College of Surgeons of England Frederick Travers thought it was just one of three separate fragments located in different parts of the digestive tract. By the way, surgeons who work with colon cancer usually remove the mesentery completely, and not just the block that is in the digestive tract. For centuries, disputes have been going on about what this structure looks like. And in Recently, everyone began to return to the opinion of the brilliant da Vinci. Perhaps, very soon, the mesentery will be called an organ.