With a delegate on the green light simulator

I was again a member of the expert panel at this annual symposium held on July 27 and 28. The venue was the superb conference room in the new state of the art operating theatres at the Sydney Adventist Hospital. My presentations on the first morning included "The physics of laser tissue interaction", Greenlight instrumentation and fibre handling", and "Tips and tricks for beginners". In the second session we supervised the delegates on greenlight simulators and in a wet lab where they could practise with a real laser on animal prostate. I moderated the afternoon session as two live greenlight prostatectomy procedures were beamed into the conference room. Delegates were able to ask the operating surgeons questions as they worked.

The symposiums principal guest was Dr Shahin Tabatabaei from Harvard Medical School. He is also the director of the Prostate Health Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He is truly a pioneer and world expert in greenlight surgery having performed over 3000 procedures. He demonstrated a relatively new technique designed to prevent retrograde ejaculation as well as his data from a multicentre pilot study of over 100 patients with very encouraging results. He has also used the green light laser to treat patients who as are result of pelvic radiotherapy suffer troublesome bleeding from the bladder. The small blood vessels are ablated with the green light system useing a low power fibre. Dr Tabatabaei impressed me greatly with his focus on achieving the best results for his patients.


With Dr Tabatabaei

Tags: Green Light Laser Prostatectomy, prostate surgery