THE FUTURE OF SPECIALIZED SURGERY AND MINIMALLY INVASIVE PROCEDURES

Abstract

Building from the innovations and technologies in modern medicine, surgery presently finds itself in an exciting era of evolution. Specialized practice has been redefined, progressing from a focus confined within large and often generic specialty domains to smaller, finely defined and highly specialized niches. The eye watering pace of advent and deployment of novel technology has already radically altered the principal tenets and the practice of the craft. At the same time, the compactly intertwined driving forces of remarkable unmet clinical need, commercial impetus and competitive fervour propel continuous development in new innovative technique and procedural approaches. Frontiers in surgery are being broadened, stretch and redefined, and specialism fanned to reach far into ever more constricted areas, the heart of the heart, the brain, the marrow of the bone.

Vascular endovascular neurosurgical robotic radio-guided combinations are no longer prospect theoretical curiosities, but the bread and butter of a growing sum of everyday practice. While on one hand this is profoundly exciting, hinting at novel times and tantalising advancements in patient care and outcome, on the other it poses daunting hurdles, both from a trainee and a trainers perspective. At a time when experience and proficiency of a given operation is judged by volume, adding to the newly accumulating arsenal of skill sets would seem merely function to limit and exclude; in such a spacious field it is already difficult enough to become expert in anything. In response, as in much of life, the only approach is flexibility, to fight rigidity of model and view, and to always be ready to adapt and evolve, to accommodate different and changing circumstances, to embrace collaboration and take sensate risks with the comfort of expertise. Adaptability can also take inspiration from some successes of recent years, the advancement in biology, yields the promise of a more personalized approach with potently improved results, affording the prospect of resurgence in the seemingly blunt and largely dormant arts of surgery. Actions should employ lateral thought to feed creativity and breed innovation (Ansah Owusu et al., 2023).