Scholarly record

GASTRECTOMY: THE VISUALISATION OF THE SURGERON INVASION

A. Spartak

Abstract

Topicality. The visualization of scientific inquiry became already a specific but recognized and independent from the scientific rules - art. For medicine the visualization is still a technical tool to adjust the professional routine procedure, especially for surgery. Could we find the sense of the beauty in the case of bloody surgery invasion? If not, what is the purpose to make a video registration of the surgery invasion and to organize a competition between films in the frame of Surgery Conferences? The aim is to propose the analysis of the changes in visual aspect of medical practice. Hypothesis. That is not a quite new fact in the history of culture – we can find a lot of examples of painting, sculpting, filming some horrify medical procedure – and without educational or scientific purposes. From my opinion, it was a way to accept the medical intervention with all fears within itself – in some sense the visualization gave the opportunity to prepare to the result of the intervention – to see the body as a decomposed and structuralized object. Discussion. The surgery in now days becomes more complex - surgeons have to treat different organs and they make a resection and reconstruction during one operation. For example, there is no more one gestion on destroying cancer. And no more easy and short definition for it. Most illustrative is the case of cancer of the esophageal-gastric junction. One of the top-place in the world in the structure of mortality from cancer. Due to the borderline location of the tumor between the esophagus and the stomach, the world does not accept a single surgical treatment of gastroesophageal junction cancer. The classification of this cancer is discussed also. Method: comparative analysis and philosophical reflections on the surgery visual cases and ethical issues of its demonstrations. Results: For the complex surgery intervention in those cases the visualization help to make a right decision and to argue for: for example, esophagogastrostomy is the simplest method of reconstruction after proximal resection of the stomach, but is associated with a high risk of reflux esophagitis and stricture anastomosis in the postoperative period, which can be significantly visualized during the operation. We can visualized the difference between the operation with esophagogastrostomy and the operation with the interposition of segment of small intestine (Yasuda A. et al., 2014; T. Masuzawa et al., 2014; Tokunaga M. et al., 2009), between the operation with esophagogastrostomy and the operation operated by the method of double tract , between the operation with interposition of a segment of the small intestine and the operation with small bowel reservoir formed or between the operation with the interposition of segment of the small intestine and the operation operated by the method of double tract Conclusions: The actual trend in surgery – to visualize the operation – is ambivalent for the interpretation. On one hand we try to make the procedure more human, more comprehensive, more objective in the purpose to avoid the fear and the death itself. But on the other hand, the horror and the mechanical presentation of the human body instore the distance between the profession and the human world, between the medicine and the culture. But for surgery itself it seems it could help with the most important challenge – standardize the operation in the case of stomach cancer.

Publication details

Back to publication list