New High-Tech Procedure Brings Good News to Stone Women

Congenital absence of vagina and uterus is a common female genital tract abnormality, commonly known as “stone girl”. The patients have normal development of female physical characteristics, and their appearance is no different from that of normal women, but they do not have menstruation after puberty, and they are unable to have a normal sex life and get married, not to mention the inability to have offspring, which is physically and mentally harmful. The treatment for this patient is to perform artificial vaginoplasty to solve their marriage problem and enable them to lead a normal married life. Vaginoplasty involves the artificial separation of the vesicourethral and rectal spaces to form a vagina-like cavity, and the implantation of different tissues or materials on its surface to cover the cavity, in order to maintain the smoothness of the cavity and avoid adhesion and atresia. There are several traditional methods of vaginoplasty, but none of them are perfect and each has its own disadvantages. Clinically used methods include: 1, autologous free skin grafting vaginoplasty: the method needs to take a large piece of skin from the patient’s thigh and transplant it into the artificial vagina, which is traumatizing and leaves a large scar on the leg, affecting the aesthetics, which is unacceptable to many beauty girls. 2, sigmoid colon or ileum intestinal segment vaginoplasty: the method is to intercept a section of colon or ileum implanted in the artificial vagina, the operation is complex, not only to the intestinal trauma and anastomotic intestinal leakage of the risk of post-operative vaginal secretions, odor, neither accepted by the majority of patients and most gynecologists do not master. 3, laparoscopic pelvic peritoneal transplantation vaginoplasty: this is the current use of more surgical methods, in the abdomen to cut 3-4 small openings, laparoscopic separation of the front and back of the pelvic peritoneum pulled down to the artificial vagina to cover the cavity, the operation is more complex, the peritoneum free area is large, increase the bladder and intestinal injury chances, peritoneal membrane is easy to rupture, the pelvic cavity to varying degrees of impact on the postoperative anatomical and environmental, postoperative vaginal inflammation and polyps. High incidence of vaginal inflammation and polyps. In order to better treat patients with congenital absence of vagina, gynecologists at home and abroad make continuous efforts to actively explore less traumatic and effective surgical methods. With the development of biotechnology, there are already some bio-skin sheets that can be used in medical clinics, and bio-skin sheet transplantation in artificial vagina should be an excellent choice. The treatment team led by director Li Liuxia of our gynecology department carefully studied domestic and international experience and the characteristics of biopatch, and successfully performed the first case of biopatch transplantation vaginoplasty in our province on March 10, 2015 after thorough discussion, preparation and communication. The surgery was performed by vaginally separating the rectal bladder space to form an artificial vaginal cavity (without penetrating the pelvis), implanting a 10cm x 8cm biologic dermal patch (decellularized dermis) into the vaginal cavity in the shape of a tube, interruptedly suturing the outer edge with the cut edge of the vaginal opening, and placing it into a vaginal mold to complete the surgery. The procedure is simple and quick, taking only about 30 minutes, with little trauma, quick recovery, no wounds on other parts of the body, no impact on pelvic anatomy and bowel function, and is well liked by patients. Bio-dermal sheet used in the operation is a kind of decellularized allogeneic dermal tissue, with good histocompatibility and activity, with a certain thickness and toughness, easy to use in the operation, will not break, smooth surface of the vaginal mucosa after the operation, not easy to occur inflammation, vaginal elasticity is good, easy to replace the vaginal molds, the wound healing is good, the first case of the patient was discharged from the hospital on March 30th healing, and achieved good therapeutic results. The second case of biologic skin grafting vaginoplasty was successfully performed on March 20, and is now recovering successfully. The grafted skin is growing well and will be discharged from the hospital in the near future. The successful implementation of this new technology will undoubtedly provide the best treatment method for many congenital vagina patients, and significantly improve the quality of life and happiness index of the patients, and will be further popularized and applied.