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Request for Surgeons: Record videos of non-mesh hernia repairs and post to YouTube
I recently read an article stating many new medical students are studying surgery videos on YouTube and learning more about surgical procedures from YouTube. Since the non-mesh hernia repair is becoming increasingly rare, and often not even taught in medical schools, it is becoming increasingly important to extensively document in video these non-mesh primary hernia repairs and have those videos available for the common good.
Thus, a significant request to non-mesh hernia surgeons:
If you are confident and capable with non-mesh hernia repairs, please record heavily detailed videos of the non-mesh hernia repair procedures, speaking as if you are training a resident or another doctor. Identify important landmarks and structures, speak of pitfalls and what to avoid, etc. Show how to perform high quality non-mesh hernia repairs for all types; indirect, direct, femoral, umbilical. Then post these documentation videos to large online video repositories, like YouTube, Vimeo, Archive.org Video, so they can be found and studied by future generations.
I realize there would be an additional consent form required for this kind of thing, and some patients won’t want their surgery recorded, but assuming the information is anonymized and focused on the surgical field I think many patients seeking non-mesh hernia repair will understand the importance of passing on this knowledge to future generations.
This information is already highly valuable to the public good and in high demand as most surgeons are not willing or able to perform a non-mesh repair. As more non-mesh experts retire, who will pass on this critical knowledge to future generations of surgeons?
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2 Replies
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It’s good to see you back [USER=”1916″]Chaunce1234[/USER] . I understand your point about recording these non-mesh techniques, for those surgeons that want to learn them but were not taught them in medical school or residency. It would help counter what seem to be the efforts of the device makers to wait out all of the old-timers so that the knowledge of non-mesh repair techniques is lost and only mesh repair methods remain. It sounds far-fetched but that is really how large corporations work.
Edited – I went a little bit beyond the scope of the request.
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I am sure your post is well intended but I feel a little resentful even though not a medical doctor. Your post is representative of how the internet has spawned a societal attitude that expert knowledge is or should be in the public domain. I am a published author who has received numerous requests that a book or books of mine be simply emailed at gratis to them, complete strangers, let alone that in most cases a publishing company owns the copyright! Apparently these people are so naive not to realize much labor went into writing the prose, let alone the at-times bone-breaking research behind it.
Putting aside the economic/financial ramifications of your proposal, consider this: in most cases, pure tissue, non-mesh docs are likely in a medical minority, likely shunned in the wider medical community. It’s an old story found in nearly any professional field: standard vs. non-standard practitioners. Although many if not all the docs would like their approach widely shown as on youtube, at the same time, they could be opening themselves for potshots by critics without redress or the critics not allowing themselves be equally scrutinized.
Chaunce1234, at heart your idea is a great one. Perhaps it could be modified by being handled by an institutional medical authority sure to protect the integrity of the doctors and monitored for fair representation. A tall order, I know, but I wonder if we as a society may have gotten to ask too much of doctors. Again, I appreciate your pure intentions about it, but there might be some implications possibly overlooked.
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