Surgery for Surgeons

About a year ago I wrote about a transgastric approach in some gastroenterological experiments. What happened in this year? Well, there is a development! Let us take a look at a paper published last year in Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology & Hepatology – a magazine belonging to the Nature publishing group. This publication is a review of the still veterinary experiments concerning the “natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery” (NOTES).

This time the paper is written better. The authors are IM guys who are obviously still in the euphory in front of the possibility to perform “operations” as endoscopists. Though they started thinking about things like indications, complications and techniques.

For me the interest in NOTES-publications remain still in the question about the indication and the risks of this experiment. Therefore I don’t want to discuss the other parts of the paper. Also, I will compare the transluminal with the laparoscopic approach only and not with the open surgery, because the laparoscopy is what NOTES compete with. Continue Reading »

In the beginning of the most medical books, one can read that the medicine (and of course the surgery) is an ever growing field. Now we know that the laparoscopic cholecystectomy is a good idea, whereas the laparoscopic hernia repair is not a good one. The evidence based knowledge doesn’t need much trials. Therefore I dare to share some thoughts about a recent discussions concerning minimizing the “Minimal Invasive Surgery”.

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