Feature Channels: Surgery

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Doctors at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre today performed a minimally invasive surgical procedure to treat high blood pressure, called renal denervation, for the first time in Canada. The procedure can significantly reduce high blood pressure in patients who cannot effectively treat their hypertension through drugs. These patients, numbering approximately 250,000 Canadians, have to endure an especially high risk of heart attacks and stroke, which continues to kill thousands of Canadians every year.

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A natural enzyme derived from human blood plasma showed potential in significantly reducing the effects of graft-vs.-host disease, a common and deadly side effect of lifesaving bone marrow transplants.

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The new technique, which is as effective as traditional surgery and far less expensive, can be performed in 20 minutes at an outpatient clinic during a routine visit to an ENT specialist.

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Seven identical robots created and built at the UW will be flown to campuses across the country, where they will provide the first common research platform to develop the future of surgical robotics. The robots will be display Friday at an open house.

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Four Loyola anesthesiologists have written chapters for the Manual of Clinical Anesthesiology, a popular reference and teaching tool used in hospitals across the nation.

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Thousands more American senior citizens with kidney disease are good candidates for transplants and could get them if physicians would get past outdated medical biases and put them on transplant waiting lists, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

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Placing a stent in a key artery in the neck is safer than ever in patients ineligible for the standard surgical treatment of carotid artery disease, according to a new study published online today in the Journal of Vascular Surgery.

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Although more patients with abdominal gunshot and stab wounds can successfully forego emergency “exploratory” surgery and its potential complications, new Johns Hopkins research suggests that choosing the wrong patients for this “watchful waiting” approach substantially increases their risk of death from these injuries.

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Use of statins may influence susceptibility to or the progression of interstitial lung disease (ILD) in smokers, according to a new study.

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A team led by Alan Hemming, MD, transplant surgeon at UC San Diego Health System, has successfully performed the west coast’s first ex-vivo liver resection, a radical procedure to completely remove and reconstruct a diseased liver and re-implant it without any tumors.

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Some patient subgroups see greater improvement after surgery for herniated spinal discs relative to nonoperative outcomes—notably including married patients whose symptoms are getting worse, reports a study in the January 15, 2012, issue of Spine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

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Among obese individuals, having bariatric surgery was associated with a reduced long-term incidence of cardiovascular deaths and events such as heart attack and stroke, according to a study in the January 4 issue of JAMA.

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Highlights • Correcting anemia in kidney transplant recipients slows the progression of kidney failure and improves the function of transplanted kidneys. • Transplant patients with completely corrected anemia experience a significant improvement in quality of life. • Anemia is a common complication of kidney transplantation, with a prevalence of 25% to 40% after the first year.

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As the number of surgical procedures performed outside hospitals continues to increase, ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) need to develop policies for managing malignant hyperthermia—a rare but serious reaction to anesthetics, according to an expert panel report in the January issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).

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On Tuesday, December 20th, Santiago Horgan, MD, chief of minimally invasive surgery at UC San Diego Health System was the first surgeon in the United States to remove a diseased gallbladder through a patient’s belly button with the aid of a new FDA-approved da Vinci Si Surgical System.

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People born with severe facial disfigurement have generally good psychological adjustment in adulthood, according to a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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Younger patients with "early or minimal signs of facial aging" achieve better results and higher satisfaction rates at least a decade after facelift surgery, according to a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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A study published in the January 2012 issue of Anesthesiology identified six risk factors associated with blindness or partial blindness that can occur after major spine surgery.

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Researchers in Toronto, Canada found that whether a patient received a preoperative medical consultation was not tied to his/her health or the risk of the operation, rather which hospital he/she was having surgery was a large determining factor.

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Papillary thyroid cancer accounts for the majority of all thyroid malignancies, which primarily impact women. A new study indicates that routinely removing lymph nodes in the neck in these cancer patients may help prevent the disease from coming back. UCLA researchers and colleagues demonstrate that routine removal of neck lymph nodes during initial thyroid surgery for papillary cancer may lead to lower disease recurrence rates and lower levels of thyroglobulin, a thyroid tumor marker that can be an indicator of disease when elevated.