Lancet reports say partial face transplants are a reality. Face transplant before and after pictures here.
posted on Aug 22, 2008 - View this thread

Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (or NOTES) became a reality for humans when in 2006, Rao and Reddy 9 of the Asian Institute of Gastroenterology, Hyderabad, India, stunned the medical fraternity when they presented 7 cases of successful transoral, transgastric appendicectomies.”
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - View this thread

My Beautiful Mommy is a children's book for children whose mothers suddenly come home from the doctor with giant hooters, or significant amounts of fat suddenly missing. A bold new market in childrens publishing awaits.
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

Flash Friday Fun: Experience the thrills of amateur surgery as you play Amateur Surgeon over at Adult Swim . You'll be performing transplants with a chainsaw, suturing wounds with staples and shocking patients back to life with a car battery.
posted on Feb 29, 2008 - View this thread

Grow your own spare parts. At last we're regenerating properly. Scientists took stem cells from patients fat tissue, cultivated bone cells from them, crafted a nice comfy titanium cage where to grow and put the cage into man's abdomen. After 9 months, install new upper jaw.
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - View this thread

Michael Lewis gets a vasectomy.
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

Virtual hip replacement and others (flash). Ostensibly aimed at school-agers, but I learned a few things. I also winced once or twice.
posted on Nov 8, 2007 - View this thread

As Armistice Day approaches an exhibition reveals a hidden side to the horror of World War I. It contains previously unseen images of British servicemen who suffered terrible facial injuries in the conflict. The exhibition also tells the story of one surgeon - Harold Gillies – who through his efforts to help them became known as the father of modern plastic surgery. WARNING: Some of the following images are of a very graphic nature.
posted on Nov 3, 2007 - View this thread

The Faces of War, a fascinating document of the prosthetic masks used to cover serious facial injuries from the battlefield. Before plastic surgery was widely practised and used to reconstruct the horrific facial injuries of the First World War soldiers, men with the most serious facial injured were often hidden away from society.

Men such as those recorded in watercolour, and in pastels (warning: some may find these images disturbing); patients of Harold Gillies, pioneer of facial reconstruction at Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, the wars major centre for facial reconstruction and plastic surgery.
posted on Oct 1, 2007 - View this thread

Dental Vacation Plans & Travel Packages For Single Men: At first thought, it may seem a bit strange to combine the objectives of romance and dental surgery or treatments - into a singles vacation package! But, if you are a single man who would like to seriously explore opportunities of finding a special woman and also have some dental health issues that you would seriously like to resolve, then why not?
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

Make Me Heal is an online community serving the needs of America's vast cosmetic surgery audience, with tips & tricks on what works best to heal scarring, etc, including an encyclopedia of terms. To promote their vision of "Celebrating Natural Beauty With Enhancement" they're hosting the first ever Plastic Surgery Beauty Enhancement Awards, with categories like Best Breast Augmentation (NSFW) and Best Male Liposuction." Contestants must submit before, during & after shots of the procedure, and site visitors can vote on their favorites.
posted on Jul 2, 2007 - View this thread

15 year old Indian boy performs a Caesarean Section on pregnant woman in presence of his Doctor parents. Father stands by his son—and says he did nothing wrong.
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - View this thread

Uncle Chuck had his eye removed (graphic)
posted on May 21, 2007 - View this thread

New surgical robots are not only capable of working more precisely than human hands, but they have no metal or electrical parts, so will work under MRI machines on tumors that would otherwise be invisible. The NeuroArm will set you back $27 million, but may confer more karma than that trip to space.
posted on Apr 17, 2007 - View this thread

"Colorectal surgery has undergone rapid advancement in recent years and leading the way has been Dr. Conor Delaney, Chief of Colorectal Surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center. A pioneer in the use of minimally invasive techniques for colorectal surgery." If you have an extra hour and fifty minutes you can watch a laprascopic bowel resection for colon cancer via OR Live. At about minute 7 you can see most of the patient's internal abdominal anatomy. Dr. Delaney compares it to playing playstation.
posted on Apr 5, 2007 - View this thread

Sgt. Wells's New Skull. In the epidemic of brain injuries coming out of the war, Army neurosurgeons had never seen someone survive such a devastating wound. But Brian Wells jokes that he just left part of his head in Iraq. Someday, he says, he'll have to go back and get it.
posted on Mar 15, 2007 - View this thread

Beyond First Aid: How to handle being pepper sprayed, How to help a woman who is giving birth, How to suture, How to survive a gunshot wound, etc.
posted on Feb 14, 2007 - View this thread

Inside Surgery, Dr. Lisa Marcucci's surgical blog, will give you a lovely preview of exactly what they'll be doing to your guts, from gallbladder surgery to appendectomy, artery plaque removal, hemorrhoid removal, and more. Supplement the text with this extensive collection of surgical videos (NSFW), and you'll be ready to operate -- or, at least, to understand what'll go on during your operation.
posted on Dec 18, 2006 - View this thread

Save a Child, Save the World On November 29, 1944, Dr. Alfred Blalock made an incision in the chest of young Eileen Saxon. He was about to perform an operation suggested by a dyslexic, nearly deaf woman and perfected by an African American. Assisting in this madness were two men who would also become giants in their field. Cardiac Surgery has progressed to the point that having a Congenital Heart Defect isn't always fatal. In fact, there are enough adults living with heart defects that there is an organization supporting Adult Chongenital Heart Defect research and education. While there is a great movie about the operation and Thomas covers it in his book, we still don't know one important fact: Did Blalock rub the toe that morning?
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

OR-Live is a resource for live and on-demand medical webcasts. Upcoming today at 21:00 UTC, surgeons at St. Joseph's Hospital host a panel discussion on procedures for treating brain aneurysms, such as brain coiling and clipping. And if you just can't wait, there are plenty of other surgical videos on the web.
posted on Aug 1, 2006 - View this thread

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the operating room: surgical fires. Virtually all operating room fires ignite on or in the patient. These fires typically result in little damage to equipment, cause considerable injury to patients, and are a complete surprise to the staff.
posted on Jul 29, 2006 - View this thread

Living with half a brain - hemispherectomy, probably the most radical procedure in neurosurgery
posted on Jun 29, 2006 - View this thread

The ultimate in outsourcing. Welcome to India, where you can visit the Taj Mahal and get a new knee, all for under $10,000, airfare included. Of course, it's not just for Canadians whose health care system, while free, sometimes necessitates lengthy waits for important surgical procedures. The uninsured in the US and other nations are a potential market as well. And there's potential for medical tourism destinations in the US as well.
posted on Jun 17, 2006 - View this thread

Justin's Rattlesnake Bite is the true story of one man's adventures in surgery after being surprised by a rattlesnake which bit the palm of his left hand. The story makes for grim reading, but the pictures are very much worse. pics may be NSFW
posted on May 26, 2006 - View this thread

The strange story of Henry M. Henry was able to hold information in storage for very short periods of time. Most people can retain about seven pieces of information (a telephone number, for example) in memory for about thirty seconds, and Henry scored normally on these kinds of tasks. Thus, his working memory (or scratch-pad memory) seemed unaffected by the loss of his hippocampus. The main problem for Henry was converting short-term memories into permanent storage, a process called consolidation. Henry's case is one of the most studied brain-damage cases [PDF] ever. A fascinating story about one man's struggle with brain surgery.
posted on Jan 25, 2006 - View this thread

Project Facade: (Warning Graphic Images) An artistic response to the Gillies Archive. The Gillies archive is a collection of documents on plastic surgery conducted on British soldiers in WWI. The web site has a list of facial reconstruction case studies. Sir Harold Delf Gillies pioneered the pedicle tube technique for facial reconstrucion.
posted on Sep 25, 2005 - View this thread

First Brain-Powered Bionic Prosthesis
Jesse Sullivan is the first man (link to press release) to recieve a ground breaking new bionic arm (PDF fact sheet) that is controlled by his mind and a 64-bit microprocessor. His new arm, that even allows him to "feel" objects, is the result of a radical surgical process called nerve-transfer surgery that took nerves going to his arms and rerouted them to his chest.
Want to see it in action? 1, 2, 3 (embedded QT links) and some images of Jesse in action.
Previous MeFi bionic threads.
posted on Sep 14, 2005 - View this thread

RIP Hamilton Naki, the black surgeon working unrecognised behind the scenes at Christiaan Barnard's pioneering South African heart transplant.
posted on Jun 21, 2005 - View this thread

Centipedes...in my vagina?
posted on Mar 19, 2005 - View this thread

A wrong made right. Female genital mutilation has been discussed on Metafilter before, sometimes with awful derails. Well here's the good news, Folks. A French surgeon has found a way to reverse this disfiguring crime against women. And he doesn't charge for it because "he considers his patients to be victims of one of the biggest crimes against humanity".
posted on Feb 15, 2005 - View this thread

Surgical Eyes - source of info about complications and their treatment from Lasik and other vision correction surgeries.
posted on Jan 31, 2005 - View this thread

His name is Leroy Bailey, and he was once briefly famous. The legacy of war for one Vietnam veteran. Part of an excellent series in the Chicago Sun-Times, previous article linked here.
posted on Dec 22, 2004 - View this thread

Micro-penis sufferers, rejoice!
posted on Dec 7, 2004 - View this thread

First look look into the surgery of of Dr Huang Hongyun who cultivates the cells of aborted foetuses and injects them into the brains and spines of his patients. His method is controversial, but his results have led hundreds of westerners to his Beijing surgery. (MI)
posted on Dec 2, 2004 - View this thread

"Is the Robot going to do my Heart Surgery?" The New and Improved MITeSAW. (quicktime)
posted on Oct 21, 2004 - View this thread

Bill Clinton has had a heart attack. Currently he is in a New York hospital awaiting emergency surgery.
posted on Sep 3, 2004 - View this thread

"I showed them everything from a simple hook to a nonfunctioning artificial hand to a $50,000 bionic arm," Agris says. "They all picked the bionic arm." 7 Iraqi men recieve tattoo removal and a bionic arm.
posted on May 21, 2004 - View this thread

Man's stomach 'fell out' after op - Abdominal surgery can be incredibly gross.
posted on May 1, 2004 - View this thread

Woman Performs Caesarean On Herself to Save Baby
Its thought to be the first case where both mother and child survived a self performed caesarean.
From the article, "...a mother's instinct to save her child can move a woman to perform extraordinary acts but said it would not have been necessary if adequate medical care had been available."
Contrast that story with the recent news: Chico Student Allegedly Kills Newborn and then leaves the body in a plastic bag in her dormroom.
An avoidable situation given California's Safe Haven Law that allows new mothers to safely surrender their newborns within three days of birth with no questions asked, no names taken and no repercusions, assuming the child isn't abused or neglected.
And she wouldn't be held on a million dollars bail awaiting trial for murder.
posted on Apr 6, 2004 - View this thread

Baby's 'second head' to be removed by surgery "This parasitic formation is fed by and drains off the blood supply system of [baby’s] head." "This is medical history,"... The condition, known formally as Cranio Pagus Parasiticus, is extremely rare, with only seven other cases ever reported.
posted on Feb 6, 2004 - View this thread

Knee surgery for fun and profit! An educational and good use of Flash for kids.
posted on Feb 4, 2004 - View this thread

They fixed my boo-boo. (warning - graphic pix)
Did you ever see this picture? It makes the email forwarding rounds ever so often, and is a fixture in the pro-life community. Taken in 1999, it shows a tiny hand touching the finger of one of the doctors involved in a spina bifida corrective operation. At the time, the fetus was 21 weeks old. Late last month, Samuel Armas (the boy the fetus became) testified briefly before a subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee examining scientific and medical advances in prenatal surgery. [more inside]
posted on Oct 8, 2003 - View this thread

Surgery without anesthesia is something most of us are glad is now a relic of the past, but yoga teacher Yonah Offner decided it was a great opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of practicing Pranayama.
posted on Sep 17, 2003 - View this thread

Medical fotolog. [warning -- graphic surgical photos]
posted on Aug 6, 2003 - View this thread

They’re a little like Operation. Today students can practice all sorts of skills on surgical models like TraumaMan®, the Hillway Man, or Geri, the Geriatric, who comes complete with wrinkles. There’s spinal surgery, gall bladder surgery, ultrasound/amniocentesis, suturing, and casualty kits. Some of them give me the I’m-a-silly-git giggles and naming a company Limbs & Things doesn't help. There’s the head with all sorts of things wrong with it, including “Extraneous Lumps”. The toe with refills is pretty nifty, but disturbingly life-like. There are strap-ons and table-top models.(Possibly NSFW) Some could make interesting conversation pieces.(Also poss. NSFW)
In addition, Somso, maker of the “dial-a-prostate” model above, also makes interesting non-interactive models like this fandex of a head, a larynx with tongue, or a fingertip. They also have neat models of animals, fungi, and flowers.
posted on Jul 23, 2003 - View this thread

Imagine drifting off to dreamy anaesthesia -induced sleep for some such surgery and having some medical student cram a digit up one of your holes. Apparently, it happens all the time in the name of "learning".
posted on Jun 10, 2003 - View this thread

All your face are belong to us. 16-yr-old Irish girl looks set to receive the world's first face transplant, it has been reported. Right now it's a medical procedure, but do you think we ever see a day where people grow face replacements for cosmetic purposes?
posted on Apr 7, 2003 - View this thread

Face Transplants : "...the harvesting or ''degloving'' of a face would take approximately two hours, depending on the depth of the excision. It is possible to remove not just skin and subcutaneous fat and muscle but....part of the donor's bone and cartilage as well. Still, the deeper the cut, the more complex becomes the reattachment."
posted on Mar 12, 2003 - View this thread

Doctor brands woman's uterus with his alma mater's initials during surgery. And if doubt the claim, you can watch a video of the operation.
posted on Jan 29, 2003 - View this thread

Doctor, I've got a clamp... I mean, a cramp... Surgical teams accidentally leave clamps, sponges and other tools inside about 1,500 patients nationwide each year, according to the biggest study of the problem yet. (yummy Xray here).
posted on Jan 16, 2003 - View this thread