Access to safe and timely cancer surgery is critical but lacking, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

• Over 80% of patients with solid tumors will require at least one surgical intervention.
• Low- and middle-income countries will face rising cancer burdens, intensifying demand for surgery.

Surgeons must be aware of these disparities to adapt treatment strategies.

• Persistent workforce shortages and limited investment further complicate access to care.

A new tabular foundation model outperforms traditional methods in predicting surgical risks for emergency patients, improving decision-making.

• In a study of 7,281 emergency surgery patients, the model demonstrated a mortality prediction accuracy of 0.89 and a morbidity accuracy of 0.82.
• It achieved better calibration scores (0.04 for mortality and 0.15 for morbidity) than logistic regression and XGBoost models.

This model may enhance patient selection and outcomes by enabling personalized risk stratification in varied clinical settings.

• Performance held strong even with smaller site-specific data, indicating flexibility for surgeons in diverse environments.

Surgeons can leverage an innovative framework for integrating data-driven performance metrics into surgical training to improve education and patient outcomes.

• Interactive workshops with 54 participants from 13 countries identified priority methods: real-time feedback for technical skills and dashboards for non-technical skills.
• The framework allows supervising surgeons to access structured performance reports while protecting trainee data to support learning.

Implementing these objective assessments can enhance training efficacy and ultimately increase patient safety during procedures.

Surgeons can lower their environmental impact with new actionable guidelines for sustainable operating room practices.

• 21 recommendations are organized into four key areas: reduce waste, reuse items, recycle materials, and rethink practices.
• Focus on reducing pharmaceutical waste and unnecessary energy use can help cut greenhouse gas emissions from ORs.

Adopting these strategies not only benefits the planet but can also improve overall efficiency in surgical practice.

• Consider transitioning to reusable medical devices and textiles to minimize waste and save costs.