How surgeons build a new bladder for cancer patients like Deion Sanders

Head coach Deion Sanders of nan University of Colorado speaks astir his travel beating bladder crab during a property conference. AAron Ontiveroz/MediaNews Group/Getty Images hide caption

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AAron Ontiveroz/MediaNews Group/Getty Images

At 57, two-time Super Bowl champion Deion Sanders, has a brand-new bladder.

The University of Colorado coach precocious underwent reconstructive room to dainty an fierce shape of bladder crab aft doctors discovered a tumor this spring.

The procedure, called neobladder reconstruction, uses insubstantial from nan patient's ain mini intestine.

Here's really it's done:

First surgeons region nan aged bladder. Then they trim retired astir a ft and a half from nan ileum, nan extremity conception of nan mini intestine.

Then nan surgeon cuts down 1 broadside of nan conception of intestine truthful that it lays level for illustration a sheet. Next, they fold it successful half, apical to bottom, and past link nan backmost portion to nan front.

The extremity consequence resembles a volleyball covered successful sutures, said Dr. Max Kates, codirector of nan Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute astatine Johns Hopkins University.

Finally, nan surgeon sews nan neobladder to nan kidneys and urethra.

The quality body's expertise to accommodate to specified a process is "amazing," says Sanders' surgeon, Dr. Janet Kukreja, head of urologic oncology astatine nan University of Colorado Cancer Center. Patients usually walk conscionable a fewer days recovering successful nan hospital.

She performed Sanders' neobladder reconstruction robotically and pinch a laparoscopic camera, a method that only requires mini incisions.

Kukreja told NPR that a cool facet of this room is that because nan neobladder is created from nan body's ain tissue, a patient's immune strategy doesn't cull nan caller organ. So patients pinch neobladders don't request immunosuppressant medications.

Plastic wouldn't activity either to reconstruct a bladder since nan urinary tract rejects overseas materials, said Kukreja. Calcium would build up giving patients bladder stones.

A reconstructed bladder doesn't usability precisely for illustration someone's original bladder because it can't nonstop signals to nan encephalon to fto a personification cognize erstwhile to usage nan toilet.

Getting utilized to a neobladder takes immoderate training, says Dr. Jodi Maranchie, a surgical urologic oncologist astatine UPMC successful Pittsburgh. Gradually they summation nan interval betwixt bath visits until they tin comfortably power their bladder during nan day. But leakage often remains an rumor for group while they sleep.

During a Monday press conference, Sanders acknowledged this drawback. He joked that, for illustration his one-year-old grandson, he now "depends connected nan Depends."

"I cognize there's a batch of group retired location going done what I'm going through. And dealing pinch what I'm dealing with," he said. "And let's extremity being ashamed of it."

Kates said a batch of group do consciousness shame astir nan incontinence that comes pinch a neobladder reconstruction.

Which is why Kates told NPR that he "loved each moment" of Sanders' property conference. The urologist described nan Pro Football Hall of Famer arsenic authentic and funny, "the feline was thing but shameful."

In truth 2 of Kates' patients, some men astir Sanders' age, mentioned nan property conference: "They some felt wholly validated by him."

An estimated 85,000 group successful nan U.S., will get bladder crab this year, according to information from nan American Cancer Society. While astir patients pinch bladder crab are men, Maranchie said that women thin to coming pinch a much precocious and somewhat much fierce disease.

Because nan only denotation of bladder crab is humor successful urine, she theorized that immoderate women correction this informing motion for menstrual blood.

But Sanders shared that his tumor was discovered during an yearly checkup.

He said if he hadn't gone successful for that appointment, things mightiness person turned retired very differently.

"Please get yourself checked out," he said. "Because if it wasn't for maine getting tested for thing other they wouldn't person stumbled up connected this. Make judge you get nan correct care."