Newsletter
Best Papers in General Surgery
The five that matter, every day.
In hypotensive trauma, PIV access succeeds in about two-thirds of attempts, but the odds of success fall with each repeat—making early alternatives worth considering in patients with no measurable blood pressure.
Across 17 solid-organ cancers, robotic surgery was associated with fewer conversions to open surgery than straight-stick minimally invasive surgery—a consistent finding across organ sites.
After laparoscopic right colectomy for cancer, an institutional shift to intracorporeal anastomosis was associated with fewer extraction-site hernias and no detectable increase in complications.
In this 743-patient single-center series, laparoscopic bile duct exploration achieved 95.6% stone clearance with a 0.4% bile-leak rate—reassuring results for surgeons considering T-tube-free closure.
In left-sided obstructing colon cancer, cecal dilation ≥9 cm plus small-bowel distention on CT identified patients with worse outcomes after emergency resection—and may help guide consideration of bridge-to-surgery.
In a survey of female physicians who had changed jobs or left medicine, surgeons more often pointed to pay inequity and mistreatment than nonsurgeons—workplace culture may be a retention issue.
After neoadjuvant therapy for esophageal cancer, robotic surgery more often included left recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) node dissection and retrieved more nodes there—but was associated with more overall complications.
A single case shows the Hugo RAS can complete abdominoperineal resection through the planned stoma site without arm interference—a technical proof of concept, not evidence of better outcomes.
In a meta-analysis of 7,518 patients, ICG-guided lymphadenectomy was associated with better 3- and 5-year survival and greater node yield—but the evidence does not establish causation.
In a 10-procedure pilot, deep learning identified abdominal wall layers in optical trocar-entry video with promising accuracy—but this is not yet evidence of safer access.
