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David Vining
Surgeon; director, Virtual Endoscopy Center, Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Surgery and radiology will meld as image guidance tools become more sophisticated. The kids of today who pick up great manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination playing with their Game Boys may someday be driving microscopic machinery into the human body to diagnose ailments and repair or remove tissue.
Atul Gawande
Surgeon; author, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
Ultimately, we want people to get right up off the operating table and resume their lives. We just treated a patient with a 3-inch-wide aneurysm in his abdominal aorta. Instead of making a stem-to-stern belly incision, we used a covered stent delivered through a tiny puncture in the leg. He went home the next day feeling well, a 2-inch dressing on his thigh. But this is still just a hint of where we're trying to go.
Jon Linkous
Executive director, American Telemedicine Association
Progress in tissue regeneration will mean more component replacements - simply pulling out a bad lung and slipping in a new one. Remote sensors and haptic feedback will allow surgeons to immediately operate at the scene of an accident from an electronic surgical suite of a hospital.
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