BACKGROUND This study investigates the feasibility of performing advanced minimally invasive surgery (MIS) in a nonspecialized practice environment. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional survey of all community general surgeons currently practising in Ontario. RESULTS Few community surgeons perform a high volume (> 10 procedures per yr) of advanced MIS. Most (70%) believe it is important t...

OBJECTIVE To analyze trends in screening and invasive prenatal diagnosis of chromosome abnormalities (CA) over a 13-year period and correlate them to changes in the national prenatal screening policy. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed Down syndrome (DS) screening tests and fetal karyotypes obtained by prenatal invasive testing (IT) in our fetal medicine unit between January 1999 and Decembe...

Minimally invasive techniques for lumbar spine fusion have been developed in an attempt to decrease the complications related to traditional open exposures (eg, infection, wound healing problems). Anterior minimally invasive procedures include laparoscopic and mini-open anterior lumbar interbody fusion as well as the lateral transpsoas and percutaneous presacral approaches. Posterior techniques...

Activities related to medical innovation are accelerating and becoming increasingly important due to the demand for better and less invasive therapies, a rapidly aging population in the developed world and a globally larger population able to afford advanced medical care. Medical Innovation is occurring in the fields of pharmacy, diagnostics and therapeutic imaging, surgical products, intervent...

Many surgeons continue to actively pursue surgical approaches that are less invasive for their patients. This pursuit requires the surgeon to adapt to new instruments, techniques, technologies, knowledge bases, visual perspectives, and motor skills, among other changes. The premise of this paper is that surgeons adopting minimally invasive approaches are particularly obligated to maintain an ac...

This is a presentation of sharing endeavors at modifying and standardizing surgical procedures as well as establishing endoscopic surgical skill qualification in the field of pediatric surgery in Japan.

BACKGROUND Minimally invasive surgery might greatly benefit from the Information and Communications Technologies. The objective of this work is to determine the better approach to include those technologies, in particular an e-Learning platform, into an in-person training course. METHODS An online survey was sent to all participants in any of the laparoscopic training courses at Jesús Usón Mi...

The technique of a single-port laparoscopy was developed over the last years as an attempt to lower surgical aggression and improve the aesthetic results of the minimally invasive surgery. A new robotic platform used with the da Vinci® Robotic System Single-Site System® (Intuitive Surgical, Sunnyvale, California, United States) was recently launched on the global market and is still not documen...

BACKGROUND Kinematic design is a predominant phase in the design of robotic manipulators for minimally invasive surgery (MIS). However, an extensive overview of the kinematic design issues for MIS robots is not yet available to both mechanisms and robotics communities. METHODS Hundreds of archival reports and articles on robotic systems for MIS are reviewed and studied. In particular, the kin...