UB hosts SAGES flexible endoscopy course for fellows – Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

An international contingent of 42 fellows from across the United States and Canada participated in the event from October 7-9, which was held in Buffalo for the first time.

Eleanor C. Fung, MD, clinical assistant professor of surgery, who served as one of the course chairs, says the course is held annually, but alternates between sites such as Case Western Reserve University. in Cleveland, Ohio, and the University of California, San Diego.

“We were very excited to host a class of this caliber here. It was something new that we had never done before, so it was great to be able to showcase our facilities, ”she says. “We hope that every two or three years we can host the course again. “

The UB Research, Innovation, Structure, Simulation, Education and Engineering (UB RISE) facilities located on the sixth and seventh floors of the Jacobs School building were used for teaching classes.

“We have decided to run the course now that we have a more robust endoscopy program and this also coincided with the construction of the UB RISE facilities,” Fung said.

Indeed, Steven D. Schwaitzberg, MD, professor and president of surgery and president of UBMD surgerysays “The creation of UB RISE has actually enabled the University of Buffalo to host sophisticated advanced procedural training events to a level never before seen at UB. “

The Surgical Skills Lab on the seventh floor of the Jacobs School building was the primary facility used for teaching the course.

“These fellows are usually minimally invasive surgery fellows, so they learn laparoscopy and do weight loss surgery – a lot of foregut work,” says Fung. “This course provides them with the endoscopic curriculum in a more practical and less stressful scenario.”

“It’s very intensive. For two and a half days, they were immersed in endoscopy. They don’t get that kind of immersion during their fraternity, ”she adds. “They have a lot of other procedures to learn, so it was good that they could just focus on endoscopy and do it in a lab environment with lots of experts in the field overseeing them.”

During the course, fellows became familiar with gastrointestinal endoscopes, towers, and instruments used for endoscopy and endoscopic surgery.

“Fellows normally start on August 1, so we like to run the course in September or October, so it’s at the start of their fellowship,” Fung explains. “They get used to all the instrumentation. Most of the time, they might not necessarily have seen these procedures, so this is mostly hands-on experience, learning how to use the equipment so that they can pick it up and use it during their purse.

Fung says an ex vivo pig model was used in the simulations to provide a human-like model with real tissue.

The opening of the Surgical Skills Lab created an ideal environment for the course, says Fung.

“Our facilities are a nice open concept in that you can move between the Tjota advanced procedure suite and the main lab, which worked perfectly in terms of separating the different stations,” she says. “Everything is in the same building, so the courses and the labs were all very close. It is the ideal place for this type of course. We had all the equipment we needed.

Fung took the course at other institutions and said that at those sites participants had to walk to different places and there were walls separating many different rooms.

“At Jacobs School it was nice to be open and the teachers could easily move between areas to help the participants,” she says.

Fung’s primary responsibilities as Course Director, along with Michael B. Ujiki, MD, of NorthShore University Health System in Evanston, Illinois, were to organize the course, keep the lab running smoothly, schedule the various conferences and speakers, to organize skill stations and to make sure that there was sufficient support from the industry.

“The course itself is pretty standardized,” Fung says. “We’ve added additional skills this year to keep up with new technology and make sure we present the most recent information. “

The 18 faculty members who lectured were professors from the Jacobs School, as well as other professors from across the country.

“The other faculty members were SAGES members who have traditionally been part of the flexible endoscopy committee and who specialize in these types of skills,” says Fung. “This exposes the fellows not only to local faculty, but also to national faculty for their expertise. “

Besides Fung, the Jacobs School professors involved in teaching the course were:

• Todd L. Demmy, MD, professor of surgery
• Aaron B. Hoffman, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery and Head of the Division of General Surgery
• Thomas C. Mahl, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition; director of the gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition scholarship program; and co-director of the GI scholarship program
• Sultan Mahmood, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition and Co-Director of the GI Fellowship Program
• Yaron Perry, MD, Clinical Professor of Surgery and Head of the Division of Thoracic Surgery
• Alan R. Posner, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery
• Christina Sanders, DO, Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery

Schwaitzberg and Carroll M. Harmon, MD, John E. Fisher Chair in Pediatric Surgery, Head of the Division of Pediatric Surgery and Director of the Pediatric Surgery Fellowship Program, were on-site during parts of the course to oversee the procedures as supervision. .