Austin Endoscopy Center

The field of gastrointestinal endoscopy is undergoing a revolution like that has not witnessed since its inception in the early 1960s. Flexible endoscopy allows a potentially less invasive alternative to more invasive traditional surgical routes. Today, surgeons can and gastroenterologists around the world working together to pioneer this exciting new field.

This new approach to surgery is called NOTES (Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery) or NOS (Natural Orifice Surgery). In addition, natural orifice surgery is composed of Translumenal surgery (procedures that violate the gastrointestinal tract to enter the peritoneal cavity), and Endolumenal surgery (procedures performed within the lumen of gastrointestinal tract or other hollow organs may be accessed through natural orifices). These new approaches are very promising and have the potential to significantly reduce postoperative pain, infection, complications and be able to return to normal activities significantly faster than laparoscopic surgery.

Companies like Apollo Endosurgery, Inc. in Austin, TX working in close collaboration with surgeons and therapeutic endoscopists around the world to develop new flexible surgical tools to assist in the promotion of natural orifice surgery. These devices will be compatible with existing platforms and to enable endoscope surgeons and endoscopists to perform procedures previously only possible through laparoscopic or open surgical approaches.

There are more than twenty commonly performed surgical procedures that are being studied and considered as good candidates for NOTES procedures. Procedures such as cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), appendectomy, oophorectomy, tubal ligation, the ventral hernia repair, exploration peritoneal, gastrointestinal, early cancer resections and gastric reduction procedures of obesity are being studied by leading medical centers around the world. These procedures represent over five million transactions in the U.S. alone that could be implemented as procedures of NOS into the future. In 2002, Dr Tony Kalloo of Johns Hopkins Medical Center published the first article on the notes and the patient benefits of potential natural orifice procedures. Although the vast majority of the medical community was skeptical Kalloo says, visionaries including its concepts and initial research began.

Today, there were more than two hundred natural orifice surgical procedures performed worldwide. The first results are very promising, but much more research is needed before these procedures become easily accessible to the general public. Many experts believe that in the next step two or three years we have experienced over the past two decades could be radically changed forever. The development of less invasive medicine has enormous potential impact on not only the quality of life of surgical patient, but on our economy. Reduce pain and recovery time is not only good for the patient, but also good for the economy.