INNOVATION: A PASSION THAT EAES BRINGS TO SURGEONS
From the 31st May to the 6th June 1998, I attended the EAES congress in Rome for my first time, still a resident. It was a wonderful experience, seeing those who had developed laparoscopic surgery, the true pioneers of surgery, those who had written important papers and books on this approach; those who operated without the proper energy devices, with low quality vision systems and were developing a new way to understand “surgery”; those who were able to learn to change the concepts of surgery, being able to stop looking at the patient and coordinate themself in 2 dimensions looking at a screen. I was impressed because the new technology of those times was there, all in the same room, it was as science fiction. It was like a huge party in which everybody was excited with these new trends in surgery and the future that was coming.
EAES marked me for what it is, a society based on innovation where you know that you will find the paths that lead to the future of surgery. Since my first congress in Rome, I have been attending this “party of innovation” every single year with the spirit of friendship and sharing knowledge in each corner of the different congress venues around Europe.
Being President of this society today is exciting and my goal is based on those characteristics that I have always seen in this society: bring innovation to surgeons worldwide and develop the proper training and educational programmes to teach in a standardised way. These two aspects are the key to be developed in the future.
Regarding innovation, we can say that what comes to us in surgery is exciting, it is a future that seeks to increase the effectiveness of the procedures we perform, while making them safer. This innovation also allows levels of excellence to be achieved simultaneously in many hospitals since they can be accessible to many centres, unlike in the past where it was only achieved in certain very specific places. Robotics, tracer-guided surgery, that led us to the body as if it were an atlas of anatomy, artificial intelligence, surgical planning based on 3D reconstructions, excellence in imaging with 4K, 8K and 3D, and virtual reality, they were science fiction very few years ago and now they are reality within our reach. Our mission as a society is to disseminate them, determine their proper uses and analyse where their application is profitable, teach how to use them and try to struggle for their democratisation by making them accessible in as many centres as possible.
On the other hand, modern times show the shift of paradigm with new trends on training and education: tele-mentoring and online training make things more accessible and easier and it will be an important pillar of surgeon education in the future. But, of course, we have an important challenge in front of us, combining these new trends in education with the traditional ways, which are very important abilities to maintain, technically and non-technically, needed by the surgeon, that you cannot learn in front of the screen of your laptop or mobile devices.
Finally, we have a very interesting project, inherited from a visionary, our previous President Andrea Pietrabissa, that had not been considered until recently. We struggle for sustainability and safety. We would like to have green operating rooms where the waste generated is well organised, just as we do in our homes and that is required from companies. Operating rooms must change, since the amount of garbage they generate is impressive and we are aware that this concept must be changed. In addition, finally, we want operating rooms to be even safer places than they are, applying technological innovation to achieve this goal.
