In the old days, one could refine surgical technique with just sutures and a board of styrofoam. Now, in order to learn laparoscopy, interns and residents have to use super-expensive simulators to which most hospitals don’t even have access. So even though laparoscopy is known to offer many advantages over open procedures, many surgeons still […]

[Read more →]

 
The lower esophageal sphincter is a bothersome little junction that so often fails to do its job: either it’s too loose and burps up hot acid after each meal, or it’s too tight and won’t let anything down. Although we jam all sorts of devices down there to determine the need for surgical intervention, it’s […]

[Read more →]

 
At SAGES we got the distinct impression that every surgical procedure known to man has a one-way ticket to NOTESville. If that’s the case, then surgeons will need to get a lot more comfortable manipulating endoscopes, as their unintuitive controls tend to frighten novices. We stopped over at the Simbionix booth to check out their GI […]

[Read more →]

Despite all of the breathless praise being heaped on NOTES at this year’s SAGES, there was still considerable excitement about single port access laparoscopy, another kind of über-minimally invasive surgery that has made great strides over the past year. In this two-part series, we’ll take a look at some of the devices that have made this platform […]

[Read more →]

 
The exhibit hall at SAGES 2008 was something of an HD wonderland; everywhere you turned, there was another laparoscope pointing at a flower, the minute stalks of the stamen revealed in excruciating detail on a nearby flatscreen.
Of all the high definition systems shown, we must say that we were the least impressed with the optics […]

[Read more →]

During the SAGES emerging technologies session, which to us was like an early Christmas, Dr. Dmitry Nepomnayshy presented his experience using the EndoBarrier, an endoscopically-deployed impermeable tube that is placed in the duodenum to prevent absorption.
Two patients have received the full treatment so far; within twelve weeks, one lost 11 pounds and the other 26 pounds. […]

[Read more →]

 
Sometimes a long trocar is a good thing: when your patient has a BMI of 40, for example, there will be a fair amount of abdominal fat to plow through. Sometimes, however, a long trocar is not so desirable: when you have just driven it into the aorta, say, or when it starts bumping into […]

[Read more →]

High definition laparoscopes offer phenomenal images, but as recently as this week we bemoaned the lack of user-friendly high definition recording platforms in the operating room. Sony’s new ImageCore HD, being shown this weekend in the SAGES exhibit hall, changes everything. This thing is so user-friendly and feature-loaded that, frankly, we can’t believe we’ve lived so long […]

[Read more →]

How would you feel if the surgeon performing an endoscopic procedure on you was naked… and on another continent? Sounds good, right?
Well, that may happen soon, thanks to telepresence surgery.

[Read more →]

 
In a sign that there are way too many surgical meshes out there, SAGES dedicated an entire morning panel to a discussion of the subject titled “The Explosion of Biomaterials for Hernia Repair; What Do I Do?”. The answer, apparently, is: we don’t know. 

[Read more →]