Antonie Deussen should be dead long ago. “I was more or less written off,” remembers the 79-year-old from Hinte (Aurich district). Her doctors had no hope and recommended palliative treatment. “I had mentally finished everything.”

But things turned out differently: Thanks to a special procedure called holomedicine, the pensioner is feeling better today.

Cancer in the intestines and liver

The devastating diagnosis came in 2019, as Deussen says. colon cancer, the liver was also affected. “When you hear: There’s nothing you can do anymore, you have to treat it palliatively…” The 79-year-old’s voice breaks off. “You know: This can suddenly happen very quickly.” A doctor gave her the bad news. “He said: My God, you can’t touch it. The liver looks like Swiss cheese.”

But her son didn’t want to accept that – and happened to talk to a specialist at the Pius Hospital in Oldenburg. The clinic is one of five holomedicine centers worldwide.

Holomedicine is a new procedure

Doctors wear special glasses that allow them to see, enlarge and turn patients’ organs three-dimensionally in the air in front of them. The virtual organ is visible to the doctors through augmented reality glasses; the CT images appear three-dimensional in the middle of the operating room.

This allows doctors to better recognize tumors and operate accordingly. Without the images, they would have to remove large parts of the affected organ – in the worst case, the patient would not survive. But this is how doctors can proceed in a targeted manner.

“I was a guinea pig”

Deussen was one of the first patients in the study. “I was aware that I would be a kind of guinea pig,” says the 79-year-old. “But when you have no other choice, you risk everything.” After an initial operation, the cancer came back and Deussen confided in the doctors again.

She has been doing much better since then, says Deussen. “I really feel like I’ve been given a second life.” The pensioner uses her time to travel to Iceland. “That has always been my dream.” Some days she can hardly believe her luck. “I’m completely perplexed myself.”

Colon cancer is often detected too late

One of the reasons why colon cancer is often fatal is that it is discovered far too late. “Most people only think about cancer when they already have palpable lumps or severe pain,” explained the doctor Heidrun Thaiss in an interview with FOCUS online. But many symptoms would go under the radar for a long time.

So can, for example

• weight changes due to loss of appetite,
• sleep disorders,
• Fatigue,
• exhaustion
• and mild fever

indicate an illness. Should such supposedly harmless complaints last longer than four weeks, they should be clarified.

There is also a prevention program in Germany. Patients aged 50 and over can have their stool checked regularly for hidden blood or have a colonoscopy.