Annual Report 2024

Endoscopy Center

Tomonori Yano, Chiemi Saito, Mari Yamada, 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 2024, the total number of cases gradually increased and we performed a total of 18,897 cases of procedures. The number for each procedure is presented in Table 1. We started the service of stay plan before and after endoscopic procedure at the hotel on our property this year. As for patient safety, patients can move lying down on bed to the recovery areas to prevent falls, and are observed by dedicated 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.

Table 1. Number of procedure

Research Activities

 A staff member from the Endoscopy Center presented about our translational support system using endoscopic biopsy samples at several academic congress.

Clinical Trials

 We conduct investigator-initiated clinical trials to obtain regulatory approval of cryoballoon ablation system for local failed esophageal cancer after endoscopic resection and photoimmunotherapy for patients with esophageal 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 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 with 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.