This Irish academic's discovery could prompt a new area of medical science

An Irish professor has turned more than a century of anatomy on its head by identifying a new organ in our guts.

The remarkable discovery by J Calvin Coffey, professor of surgery at University of Limerick’s Graduate Entry Medical School, has already resulted in the rewriting of medical text books and the possible creation of a new area of medical science.

Prof Coffey’s research has led to the re-classification of the mesentery — a key part of the digestive system which connects the intestine to the abdomen — as an organ.