Woman can eat normally again after life-changing, first-in-the-world procedure at AdventHealth

After over a decade of not being able to keep food down – not being able to have family dinners with her loved ones because of her condition, Rene Galloway has a new lease on life thanks to an AdventHealth interventional endoscopist who saw a chance to help Rene and designed a brand new, life-changing procedure.

“I ate a piece of red meat that I otherwise would not have been able to eat,” Rene told WFTV Channel 9 about her first meal after her procedure. “Thank you for giving me my life back and for allowing me to have moments with my family.”

Rene became the first recipient in the world to have this first-in-the-world known as a “Candy Cane” procedure earlier this year and she now leads a normal life thanks to the team who devised a new surgical procedure to treat her specific issue.

“We used an endoscopic suturing device that allowed us to shorten the redundant limb where food was pooling (causing her vomiting). Then we used another FDA-approved device that allowed us to remodel that limb into a common food channel,” Dr. Kamibiz Kadkhodayan, a gastroenterologist at the AdventHealth Center for Interventional Endoscopy, told Becker’s Healthcare podcast.

Dr. K went on to say that Candy Cane syndrome is one of the most underdiagnosed conditions affecting patients after bypass surgery and he’s happy to say his team has performed a handful more of these procedures with successful outcomes.

The best part about this new procedure is that It’s done endoscopically and is minimally invasive, which means it’s an outpatient procedure with no long stays at the hospital. Learn more about the innovative procedure and watch how Rene’s quality of life changed.