Université de Strasbourg

Annual Symposium 2024

future surgery


Thursday 21 November 2024, 15:00-16:30
Salle de conférence, ISIS, Strasbourg (access)

The symposium is open to the general public, and the lecture will be given in English.

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The Future of Surgery

The keynote speaker at this year’s symposium is Jacques Marescaux, professor of surgery, Founding President of the Research Institute against Digestive Cancer (IRCAD, Strasbourg) and USIAS Chair of Image-guided Mini-Invasive Surgery. Professor Marescaux is renowned for his pioneering work in minimally invasive surgery which fully develops the potential of new technologies, and for having created a world-wide network of training institutes to acquire the necessary skills in this fast-moving area.

In his lecture, Professor Marescaux will discuss the revolutionary impact of artificial intelligence on surgery and the healthcare system.

The symposium is also the occasion to present the new 2024 Fellows and the new associated Chairs at USIAS. 

Programme

15:00 Opening words and presentation of the 2024 USIAS Fellows by Thomas Ebbesen, Director of USIAS
15:20 Keynote lecture by Jacques Marescaux, Founding President of IRCAD
16:10 Questions and discussion
16:30 End

Lecture - How new technologies and artificial intelligence will revolutionise surgery

The first machine-learning model - Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron - was developed in 1957. However, it was not until 2014, when a computer programme was able to outwit the world champion of the Go board game, that the enthusiasm for the application of artificial intelligence really became widespread, including in healthcare.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked a significant revolution in surgery in the space of just a few years. If we consider that surgery is not purely restricted to the surgical act, but is made up of a succession of stages defining the patient's workflow (diagnosis, strategy, planning, simulation, surgical act, post-operative outcomes), AI has undoubtedly transformed patient care at every stage of surgery.

Notably, it has played a key role in the automatic early diagnosis of malignant tumours, allowing for a totally innovative and increasingly non-invasive surgical approach. The use of AI in surgery aims to offer the best solution tailored to each patient, moving from the surgeon's personal assessment to the automatic and rapid analysis of thousands of data points.

Surgical planning - which was relatively non-standard or even non-existent - is becoming increasingly common thanks to the use of 3D reconstruction software, which allows us to visualise the patient's ‘digital clone’. Once this digital clone of the patient or of the organ to be operated on has been created, it becomes possible to simulate the surgical procedure, ensuring greater safety. All of these pre-operative tools lead to the execution of an ideal surgical procedure. Here again, artificial intelligence can automatically recognise anatomical landmarks, send alerts to the surgeon and thus prevent damage to vital structures that need to be preserved.

Finally, AI is revolutionising post-operative patient care. Since the development of the “enhanced recovery after surgery” (ERAS) concept, which aims for patients to be discharged from hospital within 48 hours, the challenge has been to maintain a strict remote patient monitoring. This can be achieved through “connected patches” which can stream vital parameters to the cloud and provide superior follow-up compared to in-hospital monitoring.

All of these innovations brought about by the introduction of artificial intelligence in operating rooms allow us to imagine the emergence of fully automated surgery in the near future, similar to the way in which aeronautics and automotive industries are evolving.

Biography - Jacques Marescaux

Jacques Marescaux

Professor Jacques Marescaux is founder and president of the Institut de recherche contre les cancers de l'appareil digestif (IRCAD), and holds the Chair in Image-Guided Minimally Invasive Surgery at USIAS.

The IRCAD is a unique institute where researchers, computer engineers, roboticists and international surgical experts have been working together for over 30 years. Since its creation, the IRCAD has participated in numerous projects aimed at optimizing the use of robots.

Professor Marescaux is not only a pioneer in research and development of new surgical technologies, but also in using them. In 2001, he performed the first ever remote tele-surgical operation, operating from New York on a patient in Strasbourg (France), which became known as the “Lindbergh Operation”. In 2007, he also became the first surgeon in the world to operate on a person without leaving a scar, by removing a patient's gallbladder through a natural access.

Following the success of the IRCAD concept, Jacques Marescaux created IRCAD Taiwan in 2008, followed by mirror centers and institutes in São Paulo State and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Beirut (Lebanon), Kigali (Rwanda), Wuxi (China) and Indore (India) between 2011 and 2024. IRCAD North America is scheduled to open in 2025. With the exception of the Institut Pasteur, IRCAD stands out as the only French research institute with a strong presence on every continent.

See his full biography

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