The conventional wisdom in interventional pulmonology has long been that reusable bronchoscopes perform better than their single-use counterparts, but new research counters that thinking. A recent study, part of a poster presentation at the World Congress for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (WCBIP) 2022 in Marseille, France, found that three of four single-use flexible bronchoscopes that were tested performed better in flexion and extension than reusable competitors. The latest single-use flexible bronchoscopes, according to the study’s authors, are a significant advance­m ..read more

Dr. Marybeth Spanarkel describes GI endoscopy as a labor of love. You can hear the passion in her voice when she talks about performing a procedure and the gratification that comes from getting an immediate medical answer to the clinical question that’s being asked. Spanarkel, however, suffered a career-ending neck injury after 28 years in private practice in North Carolina. Without full strength in her right arm, she lost the ability to perform endoscopy procedures and provide those much-needed answers to patients. That musculoskeletal injury brought her career to an end, but it was the catal ..read more

Healthcare staff shortages, while not new, have spawned a world today where it can take five hours to get an X-ray for a dislocated elbow and another two to get pain medication for the injury. Ambulances sometimes wait eight hours to drop off a patient, and nurses work 12- to 16-hour shifts, without a break. About 400,000 healthcare workers have left jobs since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Throughout the pandemic, hospitals have had to implement creative approaches to soften staffing shortages. M ..read more

Medical device suppliers and group purchasing organizations are teaming to bring new healthcare innovations such as single-use endoscopes to hospitals and health systems. By creating specific single-use endoscope categories for their members, these healthcare improvement companies can help accelerate the transition from reusable devices to disposable ones. But capitalizing on an opportunity to expand capacity and avoid costly and unnecessary expenses associated with workflow management and possible patient cross-contamination comes down to more than simply making a purchase. Rather, both sides ..read more

Transitioning from reusable to single-use endoscopes has obvious infection control benefits and even provides workflow and efficiency advantages — but the financial implications are usually one of the biggest hurdles to implementation. That’s why it’s important to explore all the variables that go into achieving cost savings with single-use devices and assessing that shift within the context of other healthcare paradigm shifts. In this conversation, four experts do exactly that by exploring the elements that go into calculating the total cost of care and better understanding what they call “th ..read more

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a letter to healthcare providers in April 2021 announcing its investigation into numerous medical device reports involving reprocessed urological endoscopes, Dr. Seth Bechis and his colleagues set out to learn more about reprocessing and its effectiveness. They focused on flexible ureteroscopes in their research and found that, while studies assessing the effectiveness of on these specific scopes is limited, their findings line up with recent news about other flexible endoscopes — that a surprising number still harbor protein and other debris ..read more

Matthew Katz was at Weill Cornell Medicine when a chance digital encounter ended up steering him into urology. “If you had asked me what a urologist did before medical school I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer the question,” he told me self-deprecatingly when we chatted at the American Urological Association’s annual conference in New Orleans. But a blast email to the entire medical school looking for people interested in robotics research caught Katz’s eye. His background in bioengineering had sparked an interest in doing something medically that was hands on, working with new techn ..read more

Empowering women in endoscopy is something Dr. Arthi Sanjeevi is clearly passionate about. It shows in her work mentoring young gastroenterologists and in the way she tackles gender-related challenges in the field. In this conversation, Dr. Sanjeevi discusses what’s missing when it comes to empowering women in gastroenterology, and what still needs to be done to bring more female physicians into the practice, especially advanced therapeutic endoscopy. Sanjeevi is based in Tampa, Florida, with AdventHealth Medical Group and is double board certified in gastroenterology and internal medicine. Sh ..read more

Dr. Arthi Sanjeevi remembers a fellowship during her residency, when a mentor played a key role in helping guide her career path. Seeing her passion for therapeutic endoscopy — and her ability to perform the complex procedures — he gave Sanjeevi the push she needed. Dr. Sanjeevi does the same today for the residents she mentors. This is particularly important for female gastroenterologists, because studies show that even as female medical graduates outnumber males in every country except Japan and Switzerland, female gastroenterologist numbers remain stagnant. The nonprofit Women in Endoscopy ..read more

May was Bladder Cancer Awareness Month, so we wanted to share a conversation with Dr. Yair Lotan on the state of bladder cancer awareness and research, his work with the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, and some of the advancements in bladder cancer research that most excite him. Dr. Lotan is a urology professor and chief of urologic oncology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He’s known nationally for his research on urine markers and molecular markers, which will help determine patients at higher risk for recurrent cancer.  Bladder cancer is the sixth m ..read more