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Ann Thorac Surg 2006;81:10-18
© 2006 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

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Presidential address

The Impact of New Technology on Cardiothoracic Surgical Practice

Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee

^_* Address correspondence to Dr Pennington, Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, East Tennessee State University, P.O. Box 70575, Johnson City, TN 37614-0575 (Email: penningg@etsu.edu).

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

 
My choice of this topic of new surgical technology stems not only from the thoracic surgeon's inherent attraction and even affection for new techniques, instruments, devices, and gadgets and the potential benefits such technology may offer our patients, but the impact that rapidly changing technology may have on us as thoracic surgeons and as individuals. Perhaps more than ever before, we find ourselves faced with choices between the established, well proven, comfortable technology requiring no new training and the possibly more effective new technology which requires significant effort to learn and adapt to our practices. Not only are there varying degrees of stress created by the need to learn the new techniques, there are ethical, moral, and legal concerns accompanying the introduction of new techniques and procedures. For example, is it necessary to extensively retrain ourselves and our teams in order to make a smaller, perhaps less painful incision for a procedure we've done well for many years through a larger incision? The answer is "yes", if we can show the benefit to our patients without compromising quality. Fogarty warns us that the pace and rate of technologic change has increased to the point that an established procedure begins a challenge of obsolescence in seven years [1].

A corollary of the thoracic surgical challenges of change has recently developed in the automobile industry, a favorite and frequent fascination of Americans, particularly surgeons. The Oldsmobile was recently declared dead! Gone is the magic and thrill of one of America's most beloved performers as a family car as well as a racing car. Founded in 1897, Oldsmobile developed the famous "Rocket 88", a V-8 gasoline engine, which led to its recognition as a real "muscle car". Oldsmobile was the first to employ true assembly line technology, the first to use . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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