APRIL 2006

General Surgery and Endosurgery Faculty and Fellows Make Strong Showing at Spring Meetings

Faculty and fellows of the Division of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery and the Emory Endosurgery Unit made significant contributions to Digestive Diseases Week 2006 and Surgical Spring Week 2006, the latter being comprised of back-to-back meetings at the Hilton Anatole, Dallas: the American College of Surgeons’ 34th Annual Spring Meeting, April 23-26, and the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) 25th Anniversary Spring Meeting, April 26-29. Division chief and Endosurgery Unit director Dr. C. Daniel Smith, the First Vice President of SAGES, served as the Program Chair for the SAGES meeting, which had a record attendance of 1900. Dr. Smith also presented the results of the study "Endoscopic Ablation of Intestinal Metaplasia with High-Grade Dysplasia in Esophagectomy Patients using a Balloon-based Ablation System" at the plenary session (summary).

Dr. Leena Khaitan chaired a panel session on GERD during the SAGES meeting and was the session chair for Laparoscopic Solid Organ Surgery at the ACS meeting, where Dr. Juan Sarmiento presented on laparoscopic liver resections. Dr. Khaitan was also the recipient of the 2006 SAGES Young Researcher Award, considered to be the most prestigious research-based honor a SAGES member can receive.

Dr. Edward Lin co-chaired the SAGES Endoluminal Surgery Hands-On course, an all-day event providing surgeons with exposure to flexible endoscopic procedures and interventions that involved nine months of planning and cost over four million dollars to prepare, and was also a featured speaker on integrating colonoscopy into surgical practice. Dr. S. Scott Davis was a lab instructor for the endoluminal surgery course and co-authored the oral presentation "A Computerized Analysis of Robotic Versus Laparoscopic Performance."

Dr. Plato Esartia, an endosurgery fellow, chaired the meeting’s International Teleconference which broadcast laparoendoscopic procedures to audiences in China, Europe and South America. Dr. Sarmiento presented a video on laparoscopic formal left liver resection at the teleconference.

Several additional fellows from the Endosurgery Unit also contributed to the SAGES meeting. Dr. Gavin French screened his video on laparoscopic left adrenalectomy; Dr. Ih-Ping Huang presented data on C-reactive protein associated with roux-limb length following gastric bypass surgery; Dr. Adam Goldenberg participated in the "How I Do It" Learning Center, discussing Heller myotomies and endoscopic GERD therapy; Dr. Craig Morgenthal showed a video on reoperative paraesophageal hernias; and Dr. Nechol Allen presented a poster on ventral hernia repairs in the elderly.

Emory faculty and fellows were also active in several venues at Digestive Diseases Week 2006, held in May in Los Angeles. Endosurgery fellow Dr. Craig Morgenthal presented Emory’s ten-year outcomes data on Nissen fundoplications at the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, a paper that received the top score for its category, and Dr. Matthew Shane displayed a poster on esophageal impedance studies with Dr. Khaitan. Dr. Lin presented novel data at the American Gastroenterology Association titled "Alterations in Gut PDK-4 and Calpain-9 are Associated with Improved Insulin Sensitivity Following Roux-En-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery." The project used genomic profiling to identify gut hormones associated with type-2 diabetes and was based on work performed with Dr. Nana Gletsu, Director of Obesity and Translational Research at the Emory Bariatric Center.

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