Publications by authors named "Schwaitzberg S"

Problem: Accommodations for injured and disabled surgical providers have to balance an individual's needs with measures that ensure sterility requirements, patient and provider safety. The highly specialized nature of the surgical environment poses challenges when implementing changes in the operating room and literature is limited on adaptive surgical hand preparation techniques necessary to maximize a disabled medical student's active participation in their surgical clerkship.

Intervention: This paper presents a detailed account of the development and implementation of an adaptive surgical hand preparation designed to address mobility needs, enabling a student's active participation and education in the surgical curriculum.

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Introduction: Subjective surgeon interpretation of near-infrared perfusion video is limited by low inter-observer agreement and poor correlation to clinical outcomes. In contrast, quantification of indocyanine green fluorescence video (Q-ICG) correlates with histologic level of perfusion as well as clinical outcomes. Measuring dye volume over time, however, has limitations, such as it is not on-demand, has poor spatial resolution, and is not easily repeatable.

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Objectives: This study aimed to compare surgical resection versus ablation for managing liver malignancies in patients 65 and older.

Material And Methods: Cases with liver tumors were extracted from the NSQIP database for patients aged ≥65 years. Following propensity score matching, multivariate Cox regression was used for 30-day morbidity and mortality for liver resection and ablation.

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Objective: Obtaining surgical informed consent (SIC) is a critical skill most residents are expected to learn "on-the-job." This study sought to quantify the effect of 1 year of clinical experience on performance obtaining SIC in the absence of formal informed consent education.

Design: In this case-control cohort study, PGY1 and PGY2 surgical residents in an academic program were surveyed regarding their experiences and confidence in obtaining SIC; then assessed obtaining informed consent for a right hemicolectomy from a standardized patient.

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Deep Learning (DL) has achieved robust competency assessment in various high-stakes fields. However, the applicability of DL models is often hampered by their substantial data requirements and confinement to specific training domains. This prevents them from transitioning to new tasks where data is scarce.

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Introduction: Survival following emergency department thoracotomy (EDT) for patients in extremis is poor. Whether intervention in the operating room instead of EDT in select patients could lead to improved outcomes is unknown. We hypothesized that patients who underwent intervention in the operating room would have improved outcomes compared to those who underwent EDT.

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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) has demonstrated its potential in enhancing surgical training and performance compared to sham tDCS. However, optimizing its efficacy requires the selection of appropriate brain targets informed by neuroimaging and mechanistic understanding. Previous studies have established the feasibility of using portable brain imaging, combining functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) with tDCS during Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) tasks.

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The study aimed to differentiate experts from novices in laparoscopic surgery tasks using electroencephalogram (EEG) topographic features. A microstate-based common spatial pattern (CSP) analysis with linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was compared to a topography-preserving convolutional neural network (CNN) approach. Expert surgeons (N = 10) and novice medical residents (N = 13) performed laparoscopic suturing tasks, and EEG data from 8 experts and 13 novices were analysed.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study analyzed trends in the characteristics of past presidents from three major surgery organizations between 1970 and 2020, focusing on demographics, degrees, and publication records.
  • It found a significant increase in the proportion of female and non-White presidents, as well as an uptick in those holding additional degrees.
  • The analysis also noted a shift in surgical leadership expertise from cardiothoracic surgery to surgical oncology, indicating how diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives have influenced the evolution of leadership in the field.
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Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging tool for studying brain activity in mobile subjects. Open-access fNIRS datasets are limited to simple and/or motion-restricted tasks. Here, we report a fNIRS dataset acquired on mobile subjects performing Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) tasks in a laboratory environment.

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Article Synopsis
  • Real-time tissue perfusion measurement using Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging can enhance surgical decision-making by revealing ischemic changes in the intestines due to blood flow obstruction.
  • In a study with porcine models, the technique effectively distinguished between well-perfused and ischemic bowel segments under various occlusion scenarios.
  • Results showed a strong correlation between perfusion measurements and blood pressure changes, demonstrating that Laser Speckle could be used to assess and compare perfusion in different intestinal anastomosis techniques.
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Introduction: The Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) program tests basic knowledge and skills required to perform laparoscopic surgery. Educational experiences in laparoscopic training and development of associated competencies have evolved since FLS inception, making it important to review the definition of fundamental laparoscopic skills. The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) assigned an FLS Technical Skills Working Group to characterize technical skills used in basic laparoscopic surgery in current practice contexts and their possible application to future FLS tests.

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Background: No list of the iconic books in surgery would be complete without The Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen by Sir Vincent Zachary Cope, MS, MD. First published in 1921, few books have stood the test of time like this treatise on the acute abdomen. It is also fitting that, after Mr Cope's passing, William Silen would assume the mantle with the 15th edition and maintain his legacy work through the 22nd and final edition.

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In the past 20 years of the Global War on Terror, the US has seen substantial improvements in its system of medical delivery in combat. However, throughout that conflict, enemy forces did not have parity with the weaponry, capability, or personnel of the US and allied forces. War against countries like China and Russia, who are considered near-peer adversaries in terms of capabilities, will challenge battlefield medical care in many different ways.

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Significance: As trainees practice fundamental surgical skills, they typically rely on performance measures such as time and errors, which are limited in their sensitivity.

Aim: The goal of our study was to evaluate the use of portable neuroimaging measures to map the neural processes associated with learning basic surgical skills.

Approach: Twenty-one subjects completed 15 sessions of training on the fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery (FLS) suture with intracorporeal knot-tying task in a box trainer.

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Article Synopsis
  • Real-time intraoperative perfusion assessment using Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) could potentially minimize anastomotic leaks in surgeries by providing a dye-free visualization of blood flow in the intestines.
  • The ActivSight™ system, which can use both LSCI and indocyanine green imaging (ICG), was tested on porcine models to evaluate its effectiveness in quantifying intestinal perfusion under various experimental conditions.
  • Results showed that LSCI accurately differentiated between healthy and ischemic bowel regions, with quantification correlating well to blood pressure and the distance from ischemic areas, suggesting it offers a more objective assessment of bowel perfusion than traditional visual methods.
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Error-based learning is one of the basic skill acquisition mechanisms that can be modeled as a perception-action system and investigated based on brain-behavior analysis during skill training. Here, the error-related chain of mental processes is postulated to depend on the skill level leading to a difference in the contextual switching of the brain states on error commission. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to compare error-related brain states, measured with multi-modal portable brain imaging, between experts and novices during the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) "suturing and intracorporeal knot-tying" task (FLS complex task)-the most difficult among the five psychomotor FLS tasks.

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Background: The goal of this study was to compare the brain activation patterns of experienced and novice individuals when performing the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) suture with intracorporeal knot tying task, which requires bimanual motor control.

Methods: Twelve experienced and fourteen novice participants completed this cross-sectional observational study. Participants performed three repetitions of the FLS suture with intracorporeal knot tying task in a standard box trainer.

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Objective: To determine if laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) mitigates variations and subjectivity in the use and interpretation of indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence in the current visualization paradigm of real-time intraoperative tissue blood flow/perfusion in clinically relevant scenarios.

Methods: De novo laparoscopic imaging form-factor detecting real-time blood flow using LSCI and blood volume by near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) of ICG was compared to ICG NIRF alone, for dye-less real-time visualization of tissue blood flow/perfusion. Experienced surgeons examined LSCI and ICG in segmentally devascularized intestine, partial gastrectomy, and the renal hilum across six porcine models.

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Article Synopsis
  • Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is a technology used in robotic-assisted and laparoscopic surgeries to measure real-time tissue blood flow without the need for dye, offering advantages over traditional imaging methods like indocyanine green (ICG).
  • A study involving 67 patients assessed the effectiveness and usability of a new device that combines LSCI and ICG during various surgical procedures, revealing that both methods performed comparably in detecting perfusion.
  • Results showed no adverse effects and high usability ratings for surgeons, indicating that LSCI can be safely and effectively integrated into robot-assisted surgeries alongside laparoscopic techniques.
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Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) is a standard education and training module with a set of basic surgical skills. During surgical skill acquisition, novices need to learn from errors due to perturbations in their performance which is one of the basic principles of motor skill acquisition. This study on thirteen healthy novice medical students and nine expert surgeons aimed to capture the brain state during error epochs using multimodal brain imaging by combining functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG).

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Virtual reality (VR) simulator has emerged as a laparoscopic surgical skill training tool that needs validation using brain-behavior analysis. Therefore, brain network and skilled behavior relationship were evaluated using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) from seven experienced right-handed surgeons and six right-handed medical students during the performance of Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) pattern of cutting tasks in a physical and a VR simulator. Multiple regression and path analysis (MRPA) found that the FLS performance score was statistically significantly related to the interregional directed functional connectivity from the right prefrontal cortex to the supplementary motor area with F (2, 114) = 9, p < 0.

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