Minimally invasive surgery for T4 colon cancer is associated with better outcomes compared to open surgery in the National Cancer Database.

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is favored for T1-T3 colon cancer resection due to improved short and long-term outcomes. Recommendations regarding T4 cancers remain controversial due to a paucity of clinical trials or large datasets assessing outcomes. We aim to compare outcomes for pT4 colon cancer patients treated with MIS or open surgery (OS) in the National Cancer Database (NCDB).

Mental stress experienced by first-year residents and expert surgeons with robotic and laparoscopic surgery interfaces.

Prior research has indicated that novices experienced a beneficial stress profile in the robotic surgery (da Vinci) training environment when compared to the laparoscopic surgery training environment. The objective of this study was to assess whether this finding generalizes to expert surgeons. Towards that end, first-year residents' and attending surgeons' performances and subjective stress experiences were assessed in a surgical training task that was performed with the da Vinci and laparoscopic surgery interfaces.

Symbiotic or parasitic? A review of the literature on the impact of fellowships on surgical residents.

Objective: We conducted a systematic review of published literature to gain a better understanding of the impact of advanced fellowships on surgical resident training and education.

Background: As fellowship opportunities rise, resident training may be adversely impacted.

Methods: PubMed, MEDLINE, Scopus, BIOSIS, Web of Science, and a manual search of article bibliographies.

The aching surgeon: a survey of physical discomfort and symptoms following open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgery.

There is increasing interest in understanding the toll that operating takes on a surgeon's body. The effect of robotic surgery on surgeon discomfort has not been studied. We sought to document the discomfort of robotic surgery compared with open and laparoscopic surgery and to investigate the factors that affect the risk of physical symptoms.

Another use of the mobile device: warm-up for laparoscopic surgery.

Background: An important facet of laparoscopic surgery is its psychomotor component. As this aspect of surgery gains attention, lessons from other psychomotor-intense fields such as athletics have led to an investigation of the benefits of "warming up" prior to entering the operating room. Practical implementation of established methods of warm-up is hampered by a reliance on special equipment and instrumentations that are not readily available.

Early, intermediate, and late effects of a surgical skills "boot camp" on an objective structured assessment of technical skills: a randomized controlled study.

Background: Surgical interns enter residency with variable technical abilities and many feel unprepared to perform necessary procedures. We hypothesized that interns exposed to a preinternship intensive surgical skills curriculum would demonstrate improved competency over unexposed colleagues on a test of surgical skills and that this effect would persist throughout internship.

Study Design: We designed a 3-day intensive skills "boot camp" with simulation-based training on 10 topics.