New Technologies, New Surgeries

From triangulation to finding new uses for current implements, Dr. Marc Bessler hopes to bid sutures farewell.

Question: What technologies are reshaping the surgical field?
Marc Bessler: So right now, just like you have an endoscopy, you have a flexible scope that goes there and brings light and visualization with it and a channel or two to put instruments down, that's the technology we're using for the most part to get in from a long distance away to reach to the organ we need to get to, you know, in a path that may not be a straight line and so we're using right now, off the shelf instruments that weren't particularly designed for the purposes we're using them ultimately and we need to have things that can steer better, that can provide some rigidity once you get there and although they get there in a flexible manner, end up giving you some stiffness so you can work. We need to triangulate, right now the instruments come out like this and we're used to operating like this, like with your hands. So we need to have technology that will allow us to come out and back towards the center so that we can work in a triangulated fashion and those technologies exist, they really need to be refined and brought to the market so they can be used for patients, not just on someone's, you know, work bench.
 
Recorded on: 6/16/08