Z-shaped incision enhances minimally-invasi...( A novel surgical technique allowing ...),Health

A novel surgical technique allowing doctors to operate on patients by making a Z-shaped incision inside the stomach could potentially replace certain types of conventional surgery in humans, according to Penn State medical researchers who have successfully demonstrated the procedure in pigs.

If the technique ultimately proves successful in human trials, researchers say it could circumvent the long painful recovery times and medical complications associated with surgery.

The new approach, known as NOTES (natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery), involves using a natural opening in the body, in this case the mouth, to advance a flexible video endoscope into the stomach.

Using this tube, and the instruments contained within it, doctors currently make a small straight incision in the stomach to gain access to the abdominal cavity and the organs requiring attention.

"Theoretically, by eliminating body wall wounds with their associated complications and allowing some procedures to be done without general anesthesia, this method could leave a truly minimal surgical footprint, and may even allow certain procedures to be done outside a traditional operating room," said Matthew Moyer, M.D., a gastroenterology fellow at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

But he cautioned that NOTES is still in the developmental phases and even a simple procedure may be fraught with potential complications at this point.

"One of those barriers is the closure of the access site," said Moyer. "In other words, the opening made in the stomach must be reliably and safely sealed off at the end of the procedure."

Moyer and his Hershey Medical Center colleagues Eric M. Pauli, M.D.,resident surgeon; Randy S. Haluck, M.D., director of minimally invasive surgery and assistant professor, and Abraham Mathew, M.D., director of endoscopy and assistant professor, all at Penn State College of Medicine, believe their technique elegantly solves the pro
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