Surgery

5 billion people—5 out of every 7 people worldwide—cannot access safe anesthesia and safe surgery, according to Julian Gore-Booth, CEO of the World Federation of Societies of Anesthesiologists (WFSA).

Worldwide, 5 out of 7 human beings are without access to safe, affordable surgical care, according to The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.   

A superbug outbreak that killed 20 people and seriously sickened 350 is being blamed on defects in the Olympus duodenoscope, a flexible tube used to reach the small intestine through the mouth.   Despite knowing the device was impossible to completely disinfect, Olympus…

While volunteering in a Tanzanian hospital in 2006, brain surgeon Dilantha Ellegala saw a need to reduce the dependency on visiting foreign doctors. So he decided to teach brain surgery to a non-physician.   Assistant medical officer Emmanuel Mayegga accepted the challenge…

Women in poor, war-torn countries might be less likely than men to receive surgery, according to a new study published in Surgery.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa had implications for many branches of medicine and public health, including surgery. Surgeons Sherry M. Wren, of Stanford University School of Medicine, and Adam L. Kushner, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health…

7 million people worldwide die or become disabled due to surgical complications each year. Now a cheaper version of the pulse oximeter—which clips to a patient’s finger to measure blood oxygen saturation and is standard in operating rooms and doctors’ offices of developed…

A hospital in rural Ethiopia has reduced surgery-related deaths by 1/3 in 6 months by following a training plan that focuses on building leadership throughout the surgical team and the hospital, according to a Jhpiego blog post.

Many children in low- and middle-income countries need surgery, but often they don’t get it, leaving them with chronic conditions that impact quality of life and, ultimately, their country’s economy, argue 3 Duke researchers.   In global health efforts, surgery often takes…

It might seem a bit incongruous at first: Isn’t surgery more about medicine than public health—helping one patient at a time rather than intervening at the population level?