When Katherine, a patient from Portland, Oregon, had her first child, it was an event that was made even more special by the fact that her doctors had once told her getting pregnant was an impossibility. Katherine suffers from endometriosis, a condition affecting millions of women in which the lining of the uterus grows in other areas of the body and often leads to infertility, as in Katherine’s case.
Katherine’s condition was especially severe. The growth of the endometrial lining of the uterus had taken over the major blood vessels in her pelvis and abdomen, invading her nervous system and causing irreversible kidney damage.
Until her consultation with Dr. Camran Nezhat at El Camino Hospital, doctors had told Katherine that conceiving would never happen and surgery carried a high risk of losing her leg or dying on the operating table.
Using minimally invasive laparoscopy and robotic surgery to remove endometrial tissue, Dr. Nezhat was able to restore Katherine’s ability to conceive and remove her damaged kidney. Katherine, who was up and walking the day after her eight-hour surgery, was finally able to stop taking the pain medication she had been prescribed for over a year.