Annual Report 2018
Surgical Center
Hiroyuki Fujimoto
Introduction
The Surgical Center deals with all kinds of malignant neoplasms. Our mission is to provide safe surgical care for patients (Safe Surgery Saves Lives). Several groups collaborate to ensure the best surgical care, consisting of anesthesiologists, surgeons from 18 surgical oncology departments, nurses, and medical-technical staff with support staff from radiology, clinical laboratory and pharmacy.
The Team and What We Do
During the period from April 2018 to March 2019, the Surgical Center supported 5,708 surgical cases and 5,165 general anesthesia surgical cases (Tables 1, 2). Sentinel node navigation surgery in breast cancer, autonomic nerve preservation proximal gastrectomy with jejunal interposition in early gastric cancer, hepatectomy and pancreatectomy in patients with hepato-biliary and pancreas diseases, endoscopic resection under general anesthesia in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer are unique treatments in our institution, and are occasionally performed in the Surgical Center.
The da Vinci Xi Robotic Surgical System has been introduced to provide less invasive surgery for patients with prostate cancer, rectal cancer and esophageal cancer.
The post-anesthesia care unit has been a part of the Surgical Center since 2015.
The multidisciplinary meeting started in 2014. The multidisciplinary team includes medical doctors, nurses, and medical engineers (MEs), and they meet to plan the best surgical pathway during operation.
The Surgical Center staff actively works as part of a multidisciplinary team in planning the best utilization of operating rooms. Scheduling, equipment usage, and staffing in 16 operating suites were evaluated to establish an optimal workflow, streamline room turnover, and improve start times.
A medical device nurse, who is engaged in equipment usage, has been assigned.
Table 1. Number of general anesthesia cases (2018.4-2019.3)
Table 2. Total number of operations (2018-2019.3)
Education
All surgical oncology departments have their own training programs for their fellows with the support of the Surgical Center staff.