Perioperative medicine – a vital but neglected part of success in surgery

摘要

This issue of Innovative Surgical Sciences (ISS) is dedicated to the perioperative treatment of surgical patients. A topic that has been neglected by many surgeons for far too long. While new surgical techniques are quickly adopted, implementing modern perioperative therapies seems to be much more difficult. The introduction of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is a good example of the rapid spread of a new operative technique. Despite the early lack of high-level evidence [1] MIS was introduced for many abdominal operations within a few years after the initial reports of successful laparoscopic cholecystectomy. More recently, a great desire in the surgical community can be observed to implement robotic surgery into the clinical routine although there is no high-level evidence from randomized controlled trials that robotic surgery will have any benefit for the patient. While the benefits of MIS are proven beyond any doubt today, we will have to see whether the same will be true for robotics in the future.