Trials and tribulations in the history of surgical innovation: SAGES 2007 presidential address

Excerpt

It has truly been an honor and was a privilege to have been of service to you over this last year in my capacity as president of SAGES; it was a very difficult year in many aspects, and perhaps one of the most difficult aspects was figuring out what to say in this next half-hour, knowing that nobody was going to want to hear about rectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease or laparoscopy, and certainly in this audience not surgery for fecal incontinence or constipation. That left me thinking that I would focus on something near and dear to SAGES, specifically innovation and mentorship. As I started preparing my materials and reading about innovation and mentorship, it struck me that there are huge numbers of parallels throughout history. Really, what I perceived as trials and tribulations in surgery as we know it today, innovation and mentorship, have been the cornerstones of surgery, as they have been the cornerstones of this organization. The visionaries who in the 1970s and 1980s understood that endoscopy was going to become the requisite foundation for surgical practice and gastrointestinal surgical practice were incredibly innovative and were role models as mentors. These individuals are the legends on whose shoulders I stand; I could not have done this job and we would not be here with almost 2,500 surgical registrants at this meeting were it not for the mentorship, innovation, wisdom, guidance, and leadership of all of these unique gifted individuals, including Drs. Forde, Marks, and Dent. …