In October 1990, an elderly woman came to see Dennis Fowler, MD. She had several critical issues, including severe lung disease and a tumor resting in the middle of her sigmoid colon.

Dr. Fowler, an assistant clinical professor of surgery at the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Medicine at the time, sat with his patient and her son, discussing treatment options. Dr. Fowler was reluctant to perform surgery because of the woman’s obstructive lung disease. The patient, however, kept insisting that she would rather die from an operation than leave the cancer inside her.

Dr. Fowler told her about a new technique that he and several colleagues had been investigating over the summer. It involved taking out a section of the colon laparoscopically. He had trialed the technique in the pig lab, but the procedure had never, to his knowledge, been attempted in a human patient. Read more.