8th CRSA Congress: A Preview for Endocrine Surgeons

The 8th annual Clinical Robotic Surgery Association Worldwide Congress is taking place this year in Daegu, South Korea from Oct. 6-8. CRSA is the largest robotic general surgery association in the world and the event will feature lectures, workshops and research presentations on the latest innovations in many surgical specialties.

Endocrine surgeon Eren Berber, MD, of Cleveland Clinic’s Endocrinology & Metabolism Institute will be chairing the endocrine surgery session. “This is a very important meeting of surgeons, where West meets East to exchange innovations to help advance minimally invasive surgery,” says Dr. Berber, a past CRSA president.

Over the last decade, new technology has been enabling endocrine surgeons to improve conventional techniques. It has provided the surgeon with new intra-operative imaging tools for greater precision and allowed for remote access surgery to the neck for scarless thyroid and parathyroid surgeries. Essential to these advances is robotic surgery.

Dr. Berber has been a pioneer in robotic endocrine surgery, performing robotic transaxillary thyroid surgeries and a robotic posterior adrenalectomy. Over the last year, Dr. Berber has been doing prospective clinical trials at Cleveland Clinic for new intraoperative imaging modalities and he will be sharing his experience at the meeting.

Highlights of the meeting will include:

• New approaches to “remote access” thyroid surgery with introduction of transoral thyroidectomy,
• Use of fluorescence technology to identify the parathyroid glands during thyroid and parathyroid surgery to shorten the duration of the procedures
• More precise management of parathyroid glands. The goal being less postoperative hypocalcemia, which can be debilitating if it occurs after thyroid or parathyroid operations.

Dr. Berber will be spending additional days in Seoul, Korea to explore the new scarless approach to thyroid surgery in which surgeons go through the floor of the mouth to remove thyroid glands. He will also be visiting Seoul National Hospital, Korea University Hospital and Yonsei Hospital.

For more on the conference go to this CRSA site.