SAGES

Reimagining surgical care for a healthier world

A Message from SAGES President Dr. Christopher Schlachta

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President’s Messages December 2024

On November 15, the SAGES Board, industry partners, and aspiring leaders descended upon New Orleans for mid-term board meeting and strategic planning retreat. The retreat focused on the Lead Up initiative and ways in which SAGES can support our membership in learning how to have a voice that is heard by industry, regulators, payors, and institutional leaders. With the assistance of Dr. Sherif Ebrahim, of the Freeman School of Business, Tulane University and Chair of the Strategic Management Group, retreat participants dove deep into the challenges we surgeons face, in advocating for our patients and practice, the required solutions, and actionable initiatives that SAGES can undertake. SAGES Lead Up task force chair Ross Goldberg, along with co-chairs Leena Khaitan and Paresh Shah, and their enthusiastic task force, will be digesting a wealth of information, instruction, inferences, and interpretations to bring impactful SAGES products to support our members. We will hear more about their progress in Long Beach.

At the mid-term Board meeting, we heard from thirty-one of our committees and task forces. Highlights of the meeting included the first reports from Andrew Wright for our new Ergonomics taskforce, Gordon Wisbach for our new Space Surgery taskforce, and Matthew Ritter for our new Video Based Assessment (VBA) taskforce. We heard from Linda Zhang that SAGES Global Affairs, in collaboration with the College of Surgeons of East, Central and South Africa (COSECSA), is now offering GLAP and FLS in Africa.

While SAGES continues to support our residents and fellows this year with our flexible endoscopy, robotics, and career development workshops, we offered our 35th Canadian resident workshop at CSTAR, and with Stryker’s support our very first fellows’ workshop on fluorescence guided surgery at UCSD.

On December 9th, we received word that SAGES was awarded ACCME re-accreditation with commendation. Congratulation to Drs. Caroline Reinke and Nabil Tariq, and Erin Schwarz for their hard work in bringing about this outstanding result.

With more than 1700 abstracts submitted, we are reminded that as a leading innovation society many of the cutting-edge presentations at our annual meeting do not carry sufficient evidence to qualify for publication in Surgical Endoscopy. Together with the European Association of Endoscopic Surgery (EAES) we are thrilled to have contracted with Springer to soon be able to capture those early scientific advancements in a new open access journal called Innovative Surgical Trends. More details will follow in the new year.

On a somber note, this year we mourn the passing of Dr. George Berci and Professor Jacques Périssat, two visionary pioneers in endoscopic surgery and tireless patient advocates. Their spirit lives on in the activities of SAGES, EAES, and the global societies of endoscopic surgery.

Accordingly, for innovators and early adopters looking to hear what is too new for CME, the 6th Next Big Thing Innovation Weekend will occur January 23-25 in Houston, TX. This will include the annual NOSCAR and Surgical Disruptive Technology Symposium, and the semi-final of the Shark Tank competition.

Finally, a reminder that I hope to see you all at the 2025 SAGES annual meeting in Long Beach, CA March 12-15. Program Chairs Anne Lidor and Michael Ujiki have assembled an outstanding program to meet all of your gastrointestinal surgery innovation and education needs. Together we will make this the biggest and best SAGES yet!

If that wasn’t enough, as an added bonus this year, the legendary SAGES Sing-off will evolve into SAGES Got Talent. We are calling for audition videos that demonstrate your SAGES spirit. If you have ever wondered how you could get on that stage, this is your opportunity. Show us your love for what makes SAGES great.

As the year end approaches, let me take this opportunity to wish a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzza, cheerful holiday, and happy New Year to you all. I am looking forward to continuing the hard work and excitement with you in the new year.

With gratitude,

Christopher Schlachta

A Message from SAGES President Christopher Schlachta, MD – Summer 2024

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No one rocks Cleveland like SAGES!

Another spring and another fantastic SAGES meeting. Program chairs Drs. Marylise Boutros, Caitlin Halbert and Eric Pauli continued our string of amazing, content-rich, annual conventions. When 2,500 attendees descend upon a SAGES meeting, they expect to see the highest quality, patient-centered educational content, aligned with the leading edge of surgical innovation. We delivered the latest on the entire gastrointestinal tract—from esophagus to rectum, solid organ, and abdominal wall, across six concurrent rooms for one of our grandest offerings yet. We covered robotics to magnets, and sustainability to global outreach. We embraced patient engagement by inviting those who have lived the journey of surgical care to participate as faculty. We expanded our innovation pipeline by introducing our early innovators program. Our Gerald Marks lecturer, Professor Holst, walked us through the incredible journey of discovery of gut regulatory peptides and the profound impact the resulting pharmaceuticals are having on our practices. As our Karl Storz lecturer, Dr. Andrea MacNeill made a compelling call to action on behalf of planetary health and the urgent need to embrace the environmental impact of our profession. Our President, Dr. Patricia Sylla, provided personal and courageous stories of triumph over adversity, inspiring us to remain vigilant toward systemic biases in the healthcare system. To wrap it all up, we owned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the Friday night main event.

As I unpretentiously accept the honour of serving SAGES for the coming year, I plan to focus my presidency on the most important asset that we hold together as a society: our members. SAGES membership crested 7,500 in the last year with more than 10% directly serving the society through dedicated participation in our 45 committees and task forces. SAGES committees cover a wide range of clinical expertise, practice settings, education initiatives, fundamentals programs, and technologies from artificial intelligence to space surgery. For the practicing gastrointestinal surgeon, SAGES is truly your home.

Despite our accomplishments, I have heard repeatedly from fellow surgeons, within SAGES and those missing out, that they feel increasingly marginalized by the growing complexities of the healthcare system. When they wish to address advances in technology, sustainability, equity, and diversity, or updates in best practice, they simply do not have a voice. This year we are going to begin reversing that quandary through a new SAGES initiative, LEAD UP. Our LEAD UP team will take a multi-pronged approach to providing SAGES members with the knowledge and skills (dare I say attitude) that they need to advocate for their patients and their profession and to be heard. It is a tall order, but a novel, pressing need. I am incredibly excited to empower our LEAD UP team and, in turn, our membership. We will keep you current on this process as it unfolds.

In addition, as our profession becomes increasingly driven by technology, the interaction between human and machine must continue to be carefully engineered and nurtured to protect our physical and mental capacities. In the coming year, we are going to dive deeply back into the importance of surgical ergonomics.

It is a genuinely remarkable privilege to be tasked with leadership of this society, which has been an inspiration throughout my entire professional career. I look eagerly toward working with each one of you to liberate your creativity and cultivate extraordinary opportunities. Let us continue to innovate, educate, and collaborate to improve patient care.

With gratitude,

Christopher Schlachta, MD

 

A Message from SAGES President Dr. Pat Sylla – Spring 2024

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This message marks the official countdown to our SAGES meeting in Cleveland! It is hard to believe that in less than a month, we will be shuffling through the bustling halls of the convention center, catching up with old friends, and exchanging clinical narratives of success and challenges with the common goal of fostering learning and elevating patient care. Our program chairs, Drs. Marylise Boutros, Caitlin Halbert and Eric Pauli have put together an extraordinary program, packed with practice-enriching, innovative and patient-centered content.

This year’s program will be groundbreaking. Across five sessions on the topics of postoperative recovery, access to bariatric care, management of hernias, gastroparesis, and colorectal anastomotic leaks, patients will serve as faculty and share their unique experience. Please join me in warmly welcoming them to SAGES. This year’s program will also engage all of us in a discussion about the environmental impact of our MIS practice. Our Friday program will include several sessions with expert content and practical tips to guide us through the process of making our ORs and surgical practices more sustainable.

There will also be no shortage of fun activities throughout the meeting. Brilliantly coordinated by our program chairs and RPS Task Force volunteers, come partake in some wellness get-togethers. Take advantage of Camp SAGES Childcare while space is still available. Be ready for another memorable SAGES event that will also feature an unprecedented number of new robotic and other new technologies in our exhibit hall. Don’t forget to register! Online registration closes on April 8.

As I enter the last month of my Presidency, I reflect on how privileged I have been to witness the magnitude and impact of the work accomplished by our 41 committees and task forces to serve our 7,282 members. This past year marks several important organizational milestones and has prompted new initiatives based on deep reflection about current and future strategic priorities. I am most proud of our continued commitment to address and confront sustainability in surgical practice (SSP), and the work accomplished by our joint SAGES and EAES SSP task force. When we asked you last fall to complete a survey addressing your knowledge gaps, attitudes, interests, and involvement in sustainability, a record-breaking 1,024 members and non-members answered the call through our various social media platforms. Your responses, along with an in-depth literature review, have served as a roadmap to draft a call for action by our Societies to educate and disseminate best practices to promote environmental sustainability.

Along the same theme and in response to current and future fiscal threats, the SAGES leadership retreat held in November 2023 addressed how to sustain the continued growth of our educational programs. From streamlining workflow to consolidating activities, our young leaders identified solutions for how SAGES could sustain its educational goals through strategic partnerships, collaborations, and alternative sources of funding. The group also explored another emerging priority, namely how SAGES can engage with patients and patient advocacy groups to enrich and broaden the reach and impact of our educational products. A new Patient Engagement Task Force was created, charged with developing a process to engage effectively with patients to ensure that our clinical recommendations, guidelines, and other products are inclusive of the diverse patient perspective and align with the principles of shared decision making.

Throughout the year, I have watched with pride the dedication of our SAGES Fundamentals, Education Council and RAFT committees responding to our members’ evolving educational needs by strengthening existing testing and training programs, adapting content and delivery to increase relevance and access to a more global audience, and developing new platforms better suited for video-based learning and assessment. FLS will be launching a new, specialty agnostic MCQ exam as part of the revised FLS exam in the next few weeks. As we celebrate 10 years of the FES program serving as a competency benchmark in GI Endoscopy for General Surgery residents across the U.S., FES is now embarking on translating their didactics into Spanish. FUSE has also initiated an update of the online curriculum that will incorporate new topics including robotic energy and new device considerations. As part of SAGES global outreach, a 2-day FUSE Simulation Curriculum will be launched in India in June 2024.

And after several years of tireless efforts and pooled expertise from the Ed Council Curriculum and Development Groups, Continuing Ed Committee and Ed Resources, and with the invaluable contributions from our subject matter experts from the relevant specialties, SAGES will launch 4 online educational modules focused on core competency procedures in Bariatric (sleeve gastrectomy), Biliary (lap cholecystectomy), Colorectal (right colectomy for cancer) and Foregut (fundoplication) in mid-April, just in time for our Annual meeting! The interactive e-learning modules, which are part of the SAGES Masters Program curriculum, are populated with rich content from the SAGES video library, expert teaching and MCQ assessments. We will be seeking feedback on these modules from surgeons nearing the end of training to help inform our future e-learning efforts, including better understanding educational needs and desirable features.

Meanwhile, the SAGES video-based assessment tools, intended to assess procedural competency, are progressing well. The laparoscopic fundoplication VBA tool is now complete, and the Ed Council Assessment and Evaluation group has developed the scoring rubric for the laparoscopic cholecystectomy VBA. They are now developing their rater training program. Our RAFT committee is one of the most vibrant and active committees and their contributions to elevating our trainees’ education is nothing short of extraordinary. In addition to launching SAGES Oral Exam Preparation Courses in support of our residents, they also hosted the first Fellows Career Development course under the SAGES brand this past fall. The RAFT resident webinars remain widely popular, attended and/or viewed by thousands of trainees worldwide, with 3 more courses scheduled through June 2024. Lastly, at the Fellowship Council’s request, SAGES RAFT will co-sponsor the advanced colorectal fellowship programs, in partnership with SSAT. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome colorectal fellows into our fold.

The SAGES Guidelines Committee has concluded the year with the successful recruitment of a new Guidelines fellow and the publication and nearing-publication of 6 guidelines and/or meta-analyses on the topics of appendicitis, laparoscopy during pregnancy, peritoneal dialysis, treatment of colorectal liver metastases, and inclusion of a health equity focus in the development of SAGES guidelines. Two additional documents are under review on the topics of appendicitis and management recurrent hiatal hernia. Given the rigorous evidence-based process involved in Guideline development, which typically takes about one year to complete, we want to ensure that they address your perceived gaps in guidance in clinical practice. Therefore, we will ask you to complete a brief survey to highlight your topics of interest for future SAGES Guidelines development. Please take 5 minutes or less to complete so our efforts and resources can be re-directed towards topics that you have identified as high priority.

Following a successful launch of Global Laparoscopic Advancement Program (GLAP) training in Namibia in early 2023, which marked GLAP entry in Africa, our Global Affairs Committee launched a condensed 3-day GLAP course at the COSECSA annual meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this past December, where 53 surgeons underwent laparoscopic simulation training. In addition, Global piloted a feasibility trial for remote FLS testing and scoring. Global is now refining a GLAP Pro training program that incorporates completion of an expanded online FLS curriculum, tutorial on how to build a low-cost simulator to practice FLS skills, followed by on-site hands-on simulation training in FLS skills with FLS coaching. A proposal to evaluate the impact of GLAP Pro on FLS test passing rates among 45 COSECSA trainees from 3 sub-Saharan African countries, was awarded a 2024 SAGES Research Grant. This study will also serve to validate remote FLS testing and scoring and facilitate expansion of FLS testing across Africa. Meanwhile, both on-site and virtual GLAP courses are planned in Costa Rica, Guadalajara, Monterrey and El Salvador, ran by local GLAP-trained faculty. Most of the GLAP team is led by SAGES volunteers with a passion for education and supported by the SAGES Education and Research Foundation, and a prior grant from Dr. Pon Satitpunwaycha. SAGES efforts to scale laparoscopic skills training in Africa and South America are directly proportional to the support received from our members. Please consider a targeted donation towards GLAP at https://www.sagesfoundation.org/donate-now/one-time-gift/ and scroll down to Giving Plus.

We are pleased to announce the official launch of the SAGES Research Network Database, an initiative led by our Research Committee to build a diverse research ecosystem within SAGES that also provides the opportunity for our members interested in participating in investigator-initiated and/or sponsored clinical trials, to be matched as a trial site, based on location, practice type, investigator, clinical and research profile. Since launching in February 2024, the RDN has received 61 submissions, with a target of 100 site applications by the time of the Cleveland meeting. Please enter your institution as a potential research site. The Research Committee has also completed their grant review cycle with a record 60 research applications, 11 career development awards, and 54 medical student research award applications received this year! This is nearly double the number of applications from 2 years ago. Our organization takes no greater pride than to support innovative and impactful research and to empower talented future leaders.

Fresh off the press! The SAGES CVS challenge proposal was officially accepted as an in-person event at MICCAI in October 2024! This project has been led by the SAGES AI task force, in collaboration with industry partners and academic institutions. An astounding 1,488 videos were submitted by surgeons from 57 countries in support of this challenge, and we thank each and every one of you who has shared videos and contributed to the success of this groundbreaking computer vision challenge. This is the first time a surgical society has ever participated in a project to leverage AI-driven intraoperative assistance for enhancing surgical safety. The challenge will officially be launched at our Annual Meeting, when the first batch of 250 fully annotated videos will be released to the public! After all 1,000 annotated videos have been released, prizes will be awarded to the winners at MICCAI. Through this important initiative, SAGES has developed the blueprint for developing a video annotation training curriculum that will facilitate participation in other computer vision projects.

SAGES continues to innovate and bring our members the latest and most exciting new technologies and techniques in our fields through specialty meetings, and you can read more about the 2024 NBT Innovation Weekend at https://www.sages.org/2024-nbt-innovation-weekend-report/.

As I wrap up my Presidency and present this last report, I reflect on how much SAGES has grown and evolved since its difficult and contentious birth out of a group of passionate innovators with a vision of advancing surgical care through endoscopy. Four decades later, after building a massive footprint in surgical education, MIS and endoscopy skills training, our organization hasn’t stopped innovating, pivoting, and challenging itself relentlessly to deliver better, more efficiently, globally, equitably, safely, and sustainably. I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to the rich fabric of SAGES and to help shape the future of our organization. I look forward to seeing you and hearing from all of you in Cleveland.

Sincerely,

Your President

Pat Sylla

A Message from SAGES President Dr. Patricia Sylla – Fall 2023

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As we wrap up an eventful summer of 2023, we take a moment to stand in solidarity with colleagues, patients and the communities devastated by recent fires, earthquakes, and catastrophic floods across the world. The loss of life and unimaginable grief have challenged us to reflect more urgently on the role we must play in curbing the impact of our activities on the global climate crisis.

As a surgical organization, SAGES has acknowledged the direct environmental impact of the healthcare sector and specifically of minimally invasive and endoscopic practices [1]. SAGES has pledged to educate and disseminate best practices and collaborate with other stakeholders including industry partners in global efforts to reduce the surgical footprint on the environment [1]. We have joined forces with EAES to organize a Sustainability in Surgical Practice (SSP) taskforce that includes 36 members passionate about sustainability. SAGES recently joined the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health and will continue to build strong partnerships and expertise in this space, as reflected in the 2024 SAGES Annual Meeting featuring inaugural sessions focused on SSP. You will soon be asked to complete a 5-minute survey that will help us focus efforts on empowering surgeons through education, collaborative actions and initiatives in promoting sustainable practices. We urge you to complete it so we better understand your interests, local resources and concerns. We want to hear from students, trainees, and surgeons across all levels of leadership and diversity of practice.

Our SAGES committees have been actively preparing to launch other important initiatives, programing and curricula. Please join me in congratulating the SAGES Global Affairs Committee for kicking off the Global Laparoscopic Advancement Program (GLAP) training in Ondangwa, Namibia just a few weeks ago, which is the first official site of SAGES Go Global in Africa. The virtual GLAP programming will continue in Guadalajara, Mexico and Costa Rica, with plans to expand to El Salvador. The Global and Safe Chole Committees are teaming up to pilot Safe Chole Virtual Modules in Costa Rica. In collaboration with the Fundamentals leadership, the Global Committee is also working to bring FLS certification to LMIC locations via GAC/GLAP programming. Much of the work by the GLAP team is led by volunteers like you, practicing surgeons and trainees who have a passion for educating, and has been supported by the SAGES Research and Education Foundation and a prior generous grant from one of our members, Dr. Pon Satitpunwaycha. Donations from external sponsors and members like you can help scale up GLAP outreach and impact to even more underserved regions of the world – www.sagesfoundation.org.

In keeping with creating meaningful SAGES educational offerings for our members, the QOS Committee just launched a free OpiVoidTM course that meets the new DEA requirement for clinicians seeking a new license or renewing an existing DEA prescriber license. The QOS Committee curated content from past conferences to create a free 8-hour CME activity that provides training on treating and managing patients with opioid or other substance use disorders. Log on to www.sages.org/login and then click “Access Organization Wide Learning System (OWLS)” to take advantage of this free resource that is relevant to your practice.

Our FLS Committee has also been hard at work developing more than 300 new MCQs mapped to a revised blueprint focused on a set of EPAs and OBs selected based on the results of a prior multi-specialty survey. Beta testing will soon begin to select questions to be included in the revised FLS exam. The committee developed the prototype for a new technical skill task that may be included in the revised FLS skills exam. The committee also plans to revamp the curricular content for the FLS program to provide a more comprehensive and up-to-date learning experience to better support competency goals for laparoscopic surgeons in training and in early practice.

In the not so distant future, trainees and practicing surgeons alike will also have the opportunity to submit surgical videos for comprehensive video based assessment (VBA) and feedback through a SAGES online platform! The Education Council and associated committees are developing several VBA initiatives. Following a rigorous process for validating its scoring methodology, the Lap Fundoplication VBA is now complete! The Lap Chole VBA has finalized a scoring rubric and is developing an asynchronous rater training module, and the Colorectal Committee is in the process of adapting the CAT framework for a Lap Right Colectomy VBA. To support the launch of VBA, the Surgical Data Science (SDS) task force led an RFP for developing a secure online platform that can support video upload, storage, review and rating by external raters, with added features such as coaching and data analytics, all intended to enable quality improvement initiatives. Several proposals by commercial vendors are currently under review with the goal of finalizing a formal partnership and launching the SAGES Foregut VBA.

We are proud to announce that in line with our mission to improve patient care, SAGES was recently granted recognition as a Patient Safety Organization (PSO) by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). As a PSO, SAGES can create a legally secure environment (conferring privilege and confidentiality) where clinicians and health care organizations can voluntarily report, aggregate, and analyze clinical data with the goal of improving the safety and quality of patient care. SAGES will leverage its PSO designation as we move towards developing multispecialty video-based repositories and clinical registries.

SAGES remains committed to fostering DEI and improving the quality and equity of surgical care across the diverse populations we serve. Our Diversity, Leadership and Professional Development (DLPD) Committee has developed the Fundamentals of Leadership Development (FLD) course that incorporates DEI training. The course was launched virtually and will be offered for the first time in-person on April 15, 2024, immediately preceding the SAGES meeting. This course that all SAGES Board Members are required to take will be accessible to all. The DLPD Committee is exploring strategies to expand access to the course both in-person and virtually.

Our Guidelines Committee was also tasked with re-evaluating its methodology for developing SAGES Guidelines and ensuring that review of the best published evidence of a clinical topic and subsequent strength of recommendations take into account the diversity, or lack thereof, in the patient groups included in relevant trials. To that effect, SAGES guidelines will incorporate a section at least recommending new areas of research, when diversity is lacking.

In order to address this gap in surgical trials, the Research Committee has developed an initiative to increase diversity in surgical trials, not only among participating trial sites and investigators, but also among patients enrolled. Stay tuned for the launch of the SAGES Research Network Database that will provide the opportunity for surgeons interested in participating in investigator-initiated and/or sponsored clinical trials, to be matched as an eligible trial site, based on site, investigator, clinical and research profile.

SAGES continues to innovate, explore and bring our members the latest and most exciting new technologies and techniques in our specialties through specialty meetings, our Annual Meeting and via social media. The SAGES 5th Annual Next Best Thing (NBT) Innovation weekend will be held February 22-24, 2024. The summit will feature the 17th annual NOSCAR meeting, the Surgical Disruptive Technology Summit (SDTS) meeting and a summit on Governance led by the SAGES AI Committee. Once again, the SAGES Shark Tank semi-finalists will pitch their proposals, with the finalists moving on to present at the SAGES Annual Meeting on April 18, 2024.

The SAGES Critical View of Safety (CVS) Challenge is a biomedical computer vision challenge launched by the SAGES AI Committee, aimed at developing clinically meaningful and effective solutions to assess the CVS during laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The goal of this initiative is to generate a large and diverse and annotated dataset of lap chole videos and encourage researchers to compete in developing innovative AI algorithms for real-time intraoperative CVS detection. This groundbreaking project represents the first effort by a Surgical Society to leverage AI-driven intraoperative assistance for enhancing surgical safety, and has benefited from academic and industry collaborations and sponsorships. To date, nearly 825 videos from 55 countries have been uploaded and expert annotation is well underway. Upon reaching a target of 1,000 videos and finalizing the dataset, the CVS Challenge will be presented at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI). If accepted, the challenge will officially launch by March 2024. We invite surgeons worldwide to continue contributing to this landmark project that is poised to serve as a framework for future AI-based clinical challenges. Contribute to the challenge at www.cvschallenge.org.

Calling out new members! With 7,478 members to date, we remain committed to growing a diverse membership and engaging, supporting and providing value to our members. The Membership committee implemented several initiatives to recruit more next generation members and leaders, including facilitating the Candidate Membership application process, reducing the financial burden for trainees transitioning to practice by discounting the 1st year Active membership fee, and launching “Trainee Town Hall” and “Meet a Member” events at our annual meeting for medical students, residents and fellows to mingle with our members.

SAGES listens. Over the past few months, the QOS Committee surveyed our membership about the state of burnout in surgery, while the Reimagining the Practice of Surgery (RPS) task force inquired about factors important to surgeons in their professional well-being. The candid and detailed feedback received from as many as 600 of our members will help inform our Society on action plans and initiatives to better support surgeons in practice and in training. We look forward to strong participation at several wellness sessions and activities at our Annual Meeting.

Fresh off the Press! We are pleased to report a near record high number of abstract submissions for the SAGES 2024 meeting in Cleveland! Please Visit https://www.sages2024.org/ to view the Schedule at a Glance. Registration and housing will open later this Fall. Special thanks to Program Chairs Marylise Boutros, Caitlin Halbert and Eric Pauli for organizing a superb program centered around the theme of educating, innovating and collaborating for a sustainable future.

Lastly, I want to express my deepest thanks to the Executive Committee, Board, Committee Chairs and Co-Chairs, SAGES staff and more than 900 committee members for their efforts advancing SAGES’s mission while maintaining financial sustainability. We are particularly grateful to the SAGES Foundation for its ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Your President,
Pat Sylla

  1. Pietrabissa A, Sylla P. Green surgery: time to make a choice. Surg Endosc 2023;37(9):6609-6610.

A Message From SAGES President Dr. Patricia Sylla – Spring 2023

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We could not have hoped for a more energizing and meaningful reunion in Montreal. With 2,500 participants from around the globe, our auditoria, tech exhibits and hallways once again buzzed with delight as attendees reconnected with mentors, collaborators, colleagues and friends. Scientific abstracts and meeting sessions were masterfully coordinated along specialty tracks by our program chairs Dr. Stefanidis and Dr. Petersen and featured a diverse faculty of current and future leaders in surgery.

This year’s program also highlighted sessions on how to sustain the joy of surgical practice and transitioning (well) through the various phases of our careers. A strong focus on new technologies permeated the meeting with important themes woven into expert panel discussions including how to implement guidelines, achieve equitable care, and advocate against erosion in physician compensation. We celebrated President John Mellinger, who reminded us of the deep meaning of our profession, and how through SAGES, we can support others in leading change in their communities. Our first keynote speaker, Dr. Hachach-Haram, shared her vision of a future of digitally interconnected operating rooms that will expand access to better quality care, and how we should all prepare for change in our own ORs. Our 2nd keynote speaker, Dr. Govindarajan, reminded us of the power of reverse innovation, and the imperative of supporting low-cost high-impact solutions that have the potential to disrupt health care delivery on a global scale.

Looking ahead, I am incredibly excited about the future of our society and deeply honored to serve as your President for the coming year. SAGES is ideally positioned to lead as we enter an era where surgical data science will increasingly inform clinical workflows and best practices, and where rapid influx of new technologies and AI-based solutions will require clinical validation and training of our workforce to ensure safe adoption. SAGES will persevere in its commitment to advancing MIS surgical and endoscopic skill training and access to high-quality educational content through various platforms and collaborative partnerships.

SAGES is also dedicated to developing a framework for assessing and mitigating the environmental impact of our surgical practices, and to outlining strategies to achieve sustainable practices while providing the highest quality of care for all our patients. Many of you have already reached out and expressed strong interest in joining this effort, and I am so excited about what we can accomplish together. There is no greater honor and privilege than serving in this role, and I look forward to working with all of you in shaping the future of the most innovative and forward-thinking society in North America.