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You have had one or more lymph nodes near your aorta removed.

Fluid forms in tissue throughout the body every day. This tissue fluid is the lymph. The lymph is carried around the body by lymph vessels. The lymph vessels run around the entire body and are connected to blood vessels. At some points, there are lymph nodes along the lymph vessels. Pathogens are rendered harmless in the lymph nodes, for example. Lymph nodes are small, bean-shaped structures. They are part of the body’s defense system.

The aorta begins at the heart itself. First it runs upwards and then it arches down through the chest to the abdomen. At around the level of the navel, the aorta branches into 2 large blood vessels. These blood vessels first run to the pelvis and then to the legs.

You have had your lymph nodes surgically removed. To do this, your skin was cut open. A tube with a camera was inserted through this incision. The camera sent pictures of the inside of your body to a screen. Instruments such as forceps and scissors can be inserted through other small incisions.

You have had one or more sentinel lymph nodes removed. The lymph from an organ usually flows first through a sentinel lymph node before reaching other lymph nodes. To detect the sentinel lymph node, a radioactive substance was injected into the relevant organ. An observation was then made of which lymph node the radioactive substance spread to first. To do this, a device that measures radioactivity was used.