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Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

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Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#61

Post by jliptzin »

nicup12345689 wrote: post #43
ReallyAnonymous wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

surgeon here: antibiotic treatment works great as long as there's no peritonitis and/or no appendicolith seen on CT. However, statistics show that 30% of successfully treated patients go on to get appendicitis again within 1 year. Anyway, I offer my patients a choice. Most choose surgery. Those conscientious enough without insurance usually choose nonoperative management because it's much cheaper.

The 30% is because people do not change their diet so they'll once again be susceptible.

Let me guess, whole organic foods and no red meat

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#62

Post by stephen_g »

midoridensha wrote: post #60
outworlder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always felt us removing things like tonsils and appendix without a high barrier was always premature. Add circumcisions to the list.

There was never a medical reason for those, only religious. American doctors tried to invent a medical reason, but those are the same doctors who told people that smoking is good for you because the tobacco companies paid them to.

There are some medical reasons (I know from experience) post-puberty, just not for doing it at birth.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#63

Post by hparadiz »

ReallyAnonymous wrote: post #21
bluepod4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Appendicitis can, and is, treated with antibiotics Yeah, kids don’t get tonsils removed anymore either. Just antibiotics.

surgeon here: antibiotic treatment works great as long as there's no peritonitis and/or no appendicolith seen on CT. However, statistics show that 30% of successfully treated patients go on to get appendicitis again within 1 year. Anyway, I offer my patients a choice. Most choose surgery. Those conscientious enough without insurance usually choose nonoperative management because it's much cheaper.

I had chronic strep and had mine removed at the recommendation of my MD Aunt and Uncle who both practice in Germany. I flew in and immediately got sick at their house. The flight must have wrecked havoc on my immune system. I could feel myself getting progressively sicker during the flight but I was completely fine at the start.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#64

Post by midoridensha »

stephen_g wrote: post #62
midoridensha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was never a medical reason for those, only religious. American doctors tried to invent a medical reason, but those are the same doctors who told people that smoking is good for you because the tobacco companies paid them to.

There are some medical reasons (I know from experience) post-puberty, just not for doing it at birth.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that; you're absolutely correct, but that's for a tiny number of people who actually have some medical problem where circumcision is a viable remedy. I meant medical reasons for doing it to all male infants as some sort of preventative procedure.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#65

Post by Auracle »

stephen_g wrote: post #62
midoridensha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was never a medical reason for those, only religious. American doctors tried to invent a medical reason, but those are the same doctors who told people that smoking is good for you because the tobacco companies paid them to.

There are some medical reasons (I know from experience) post-puberty, just not for doing it at birth.

Pre-puberty here, and as someone that was about 4 years old when my circumcision was done I can absolutely understand how ancient peoples would decide just to do every baby boy on the off chance they’d need it later.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#66

Post by charles_f »

Not claiming it's wrong, especially because it looks like this is an important organ re: immune response, but

> It is typically removed due to issues with the organ itself, such as thymus cancer

> The magnitude of death and cancer in patients who had undergone thymectomy was the biggest surprise for me

Isn't having had cancer the best predictor of having cancer in the future? And so if the main cause of Thymus removal is cancer, seeing cancer after its removal is not very statistically significant?

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#67

Post by echelon »

outworlder wrote: post #54
Calavar wrote: post #23

This is a fluff piece. We've known for decades that the thymus is an important part of the immune system. It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. > For the study, Kooshesh mined data from 1,146 adult patients who had undergone thymus removal, alongside demographically matched control patients who had undergone similar surgeries but kept their thymus Sure, you can demographically mat…

> It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. Not vestigial evolutionary speaking, but doesn't it get less and less functional over a person's lifespan and gets replaced with fat tissue?

Yes. This is why T cell activity decreases as one ages. The thymus is where naive T cells are generated, and the output dramatically slows after adolescence.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#68

Post by kvgr »

joe__f wrote: post #30
Calavar wrote: post #23

This is a fluff piece. We've known for decades that the thymus is an important part of the immune system. It's not an organ that's been believed to be vestigial, like the appendix. > For the study, Kooshesh mined data from 1,146 adult patients who had undergone thymus removal, alongside demographically matched control patients who had undergone similar surgeries but kept their thymus Sure, you can demographically mat…

I believe that the appendix is now understood to be a store for gut flora so that the microbiome can regrow after an infection or bad episode of diarrhoea etc.

Fully anecdotal, but I got my appendix removed at 19. After 2-3 years i started to have problems and found out that I can no longer process milk(protein), not allergy but intolerance and I started to have issues with "quality". I get bloated and my stomach hurts. Before that I had no issues and had perfect movement. So yeah I didn't "needed it" but quality of my life went down.

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#69

Post by taneq »

runnerup wrote: post #48
joe__f wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the appendix is now understood to be a store for gut flora so that the microbiome can regrow after an infection or bad episode of diarrhoea etc.

I believe it’s only posited to be useful for isolated small groups where everyone might get the same stomach bug at the same time, and have no other humans around with a healthy gut biome to “re-infect” them. Which explains why in dense modern society we couldn’t find a difference that the appendix makes, because we get reinfected with healthy microbiome from sharing germs with all the other humans in our big cities…

If that’s the case, shouldn’t we see more adverse effects of appendectomy in areas with stricter hygiene customs?

Re: Turns out lowly thymus may be saving your life

#70

Post by danielheath »

kvgr wrote: post #68
joe__f wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the appendix is now understood to be a store for gut flora so that the microbiome can regrow after an infection or bad episode of diarrhoea etc.

Fully anecdotal, but I got my appendix removed at 19. After 2-3 years i started to have problems and found out that I can no longer process milk(protein), not allergy but intolerance and I started to have issues with "quality". I get bloated and my stomach hurts. Before that I had no issues and had perfect movement. So yeah I didn't "needed it" but quality of my life went down.

Possibly related, but that's a pretty common age to develop lactose intolerance in the general population.
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