Annual Report 2022
Endoscopy Center
Tomonori Yano, Chiemi Saito, Natsumi Oda, Mari Takahashi, Masayoshi Yamamoto, Hiroyuki Ohta
Introduction
The endoscopy center is located on the first floor of the Center of New Surgical and Endoscopic Development for Exploratory Technology (NEXT). The area of the Endoscopy Center is 2341 m3, and it is one of the largest centers in Japan. We have a total of 16 endoscopic procedure rooms consisting of 10 ordinary procedure rooms, 4 fluoroscopy rooms, and 2 new device innovation rooms. We have built a team that includes clinical engineer, laboratory technician and radiological technician as well as medical doctor and nurses, to provide the best endoscopic or fluoroscopic procedures for cancer patients in this center.
The Team and What We Do
In 2022, the total number of cases gradually increased and we performed a total of 18,459 procedures. The number for each procedure is presented in Table 1. As for patient safety, patients can move lying down on bed to the recovery areas to prevent falls, and are observed by exclusive nurses in recovery areas and their vital signs are monitored centrally. Furthermore, we implemented a rigorous verification system for endoscopically taken biopsy specimens to avoid patient misidentification in our center.
Research Activities
We presented our approach to reducing skin troubles of patients who were treated with endoscopic submucosal dissection in the annual meeting of Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Technicians Society. We also presented a study on artificial intelligence-assisted rapid on-site cytological diagnosis in bronchoscopy, as well as the support system for translational research samples in our center.
Clinical Trials
We conduct investigator initiated clinical trials to obtain regulatory approval for a cryo-balloon ablation system for local failed esophageal cancer after endoscopic resection and photoimmunotherapy for patients with esophageal cancer or gastric cancer. In the Endoscopy Center, we established the system for quality control for the unapproved devices that were used in clinical trials.
Education
In the Endoscopy Center, we developed a common format for a privilege system for gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, and bronchoscopic procedures according to doctors' skills in order to educate our residents step by step to ensure patient safety. The technique of medical assistance for each endoscopic procedure is educated through on-the-job training led by the certified nurses, and we also held several classes for medical knowledge around the practice of endoscopy.
Future Prospects
Endoscopic procedures are less invasive treatment for patients, and we can shift to performing them predominantly in the outpatient clinic. We would also like to collaborate the cooperating hotel to innovate appropriate circumstances, including the censoring for patients’ condition and the food before and after treatments for the practice of endoscopy in the next generation.
List of papers published in 2022
Journal
1. Sunakawa H, Yoda Y, Takahashi M, Arai K, Kano Y, Yamashita H, Aoyama N, Mitsui T, Inaba A, Takashima K, Nakajo K, Murano T, Kadota T, Shinmura K, Ikematsu H, Yano T. Prospective study on the risk of transmission due to droplets and aerosols during an endoscopic procedure and the usefulness of extraoral suction devices. Digestive endoscopy, 35:332-341, 2023