Florida Hospital Celebration Health (see more articles like this)

WHAT:  Twenty-two-year-old Michelle Haines did not experience the same adolescent transition as most her peers – she never got her period.  When she still hadn’t gotten it during her senior year of high school, her mom decided it was time for her to go to the doctor.  It was then that Michelle was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky Syndrome.  At the age of 17, Michelle learned that she did not have a vagina, uterus, or one of her kidneys and that she would never be able to conceive a child.  Doctors gave her internal dilators to create a vagina, but Michelle, an active woman who enjoys working out and surfing, was not happy with having to use them three times a day for up to a year.  That was when she began researching other treatments and found Dr. Kathy Jones at Florida Hospital Celebration Health, which is the only hospital in Central Florida to perform the rare Vecchietti Procedure to create a neo or “new” vagina.  Michelle had the life-changing procedure TODAY that will allow her to feel more like a woman for the first time in her life and get back to the waves with more confidence.

HOW:  The Vecchietti Procedure, a minimally invasive operation, creates a new vagina by inserting an internal device that applies continuous pressure to the vaginal area.  The patient is given an external device that she tightens every day to stretch the vagina.  After approximately a week, the vagina should stretch to normal length. 

BACKGROUND:  Mayer-Rokitansky Syndrome affects approximately 1 in every 4,000-5,000 female births in the United States each year.  However, the condition often is not diagnosed until the patient reaches adolescence.  The syndrome can cause psychological and gender identity issues in patients.  The Vecchietti Procedure is designed for women who have difficulty using the internal dilators to stretch the vagina.  Florida Hospital Celebration Health is the only hospital in Central Florida to perform this rare procedure.

PLEASE NOTE:  Video with interviews and B-roll available TODAY upon request including:
• Interview with patient Michelle Haines
• Interview with Dr. Kathy Jones, Director of Urogynecology at Florida Hospital Celebration Health
• Interview with Sandra Haines, mother of patient
• B-roll of surgery and patient