How do busy surgeons keep up to date?

Posted 7 years ago by Andreas Obermair

For busy medical practitioners, it is important to keep up-to-date with the latest developments and treatments. Sometimes I need to leave the practice, hoping that all patients will be fine while I am away; and travel to far places to undertake study. However, I also realise that not keeping up to date is not an option because I am committed to providing up-to-date care to my patients.

In March, I travelled to the U.S. to attend the Annual Conference on Women’s Cancer held in New Orleans. I combined this with a study visit to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York where I was given the opportunity to observe how they tackle important patient care issues. 

I specifically spent time with Dr Nadeem Abu-Rustum, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s chief gynaecologic cancer surgeon. He was one of the very first surgeon’s world-wide who developed Sentinel Node Biopsy (SNB) in endometrial cancer.

He very kindly booked 6 patients whose surgery I was allowed to observe and I spent two days in the operating theatre with him and Dr Leitao, one of his senior colleagues.

It was amazing to see the systematic approach to a new and novel surgical technique to improve the surgical treatment for endometrial cancer patients and make it more precise, but also kinder for many women. I am excited now to use that technique for future patients in Queensland and also to train our surgical trainees in this technique.

Very Happy!

The major learning points from the Annual Conference for Women’s Cancer in New Orleans were:

1. The Sentinel Node Biopsy (SNB) technique that I had the pleasure to see first-hand in New York, seems to become surgical standard technique in the United States. Several studies were presented on this topic. One study demonstrated to what degree the SNB technique reduced the risk of lymphoedema in the legs of patients who required uterine cancer surgery. Establishing this technique in Australia will be good news for hundreds of patients every year in Australia. 

With the new SNB technique we can visualise hair-thin lymphatic channels, which we could not identify previously.

2. Ovarian cancer surgery: One topic was dedicated to adverse effects on patients who need surgery for ovarian cancer. Optimal selection of patients who will tolerate surgical cytoreduction well is a priority. Many elderly patients are frail, medically unwell and will not tolerate upfront surgical cytoreduction. A new European trial (TRUST study) will study which patients benefit from surgery and identify those that benefit from a less aggressive approach to ovarian cancer treatment such as upfront chemotherapy. 

3. The patient perspective: Finally, as doctors, we often measure clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, these outcomes are not always the ones that are most important to our patients. Measuring outcomes as they are reported by patients themselves such as quality of life, pain or sleep quality, must become one of the priorities to improve healthcare. We are not going to improve what we don’t measure. I will keep you posted on progress in this area.