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I’ll chime in here with my two cents. Sadly, in the United States, surgery options and availability are often influenced by insurance companies and the medical device industry, powerful entities that also influence teaching methods. This is not the surgeon’s fault. U.S. surgeons have sky high costs today (i.e. malpractice premiums, facilities, staff etc.) and typically receive pennies on the dollar from insurance reimbursement. Think about what an insurance company would reimburse for a 15-minute hernia repair, local anesthesia, and a couple of prolene or PDS sutures? Certainly not enough to pay the bills unless they were able to do 10 a day like Dr. Kang, which is highly unlikely.
Dr. Kang has three operating rooms reserved just for him each day. He rotates among them in order to get through up to three repairs per hour without waiting for operating room or patient prep. I just don’t see this model being viable in the United States. I’m personally hopeful that the Kang repair spreads beyond Korea but I think it would more likely end up in a few other specialty surgery locations, and probably still outside of the United States.