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Ethics

November 29, 2017
An interesting dilemma posed by a tattoo providing advanced care directives.
November 27, 2017
The medical care oversight committee for Hertfordshire County, England, has banned elective surgery for the obese and for those who are actively smoking. Obese patients must lose 10% to 15% of their body weight within 9 months to qualify, and smokers must abstain for at least 8 weeks if elective surgery is to be performed.
October 13, 2017
What is already known on this topic:
October 11, 2017
Filmed at the 2017 Annual STS Meeting in Houston, Texas, Dr Robert Sade moderates a debate on the appropriate course of care in the fictional case of a child who cannot be weaned from bypass following heart surgery.
September 9, 2017
The STS Adult Cardiac Surgery database data that had been submitted to a regional quality initiative were compared to a hospital claims database to assess what effect, if any, would supplying missing data provided by the latter affect the reported STS 30-day mortality rates.  The STS database currently counts as "alive" any patient that has unknown s
August 17, 2017
In this study of low volume surgeons (defined as performing fewer than 1 index operation annually) the authors studied outcomes in New York state for open AAA repair (OAR) and carotid endarterectomy (CEA).   About 50% of surgeons performing these operations were low volume surgeons.  Low volume surgeons had higher rates of operative mortality for OAR
August 17, 2017
This editorial outlines the changing legal landscape for device manufacturers.  The authors discuss a recent legal judgment against Intuitive (da Vinci robot) that found the company failed to notify a hospital regarding a new robot user, indicating that Intuitive held responsibility for ensuring safe implementation of their systems in clinical settin
May 11, 2017
I was moved by this editorial on global health matters in a daily British newspaper by an  academic medical  colleague,  written in response to anticipated changes in the leadership of the  World Health Organisation. It is perhaps time for us surgeons to augment our administrative participation in global healthcare. 
December 30, 2016
A most easily read brief editorial explaining in simple terms the power of a study, bootstrapping and the CLINICAL significance of risk factors in multivariate analysis. The author explains that the number of events defines the effective desirable sample size, not the number of individuals included in studies.
August 18, 2016
In a discussion filmed at the 2016 STS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, a group of experts discuss the ethics of testing new medical devices in developing countries.

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