Founding meeting of the N.O.T.E.S. Development Workgroup

The Fourth Conference of “Advanced Laparoscopic Procedures”, held in Gdynia on 10-11th April 2008, focused on robotic and NOTES surgery. During this conference the Videosurgery Section of the Polish Surgical Society Board Meeting assigned an ad hoc committee for organizing the next gathering on NOTES development in Poland. The first meeting was scheduled for the Fourteenth Congress of Oncological Surgery in Bydgoszcz on May 15, 2008. Tadeusz Wróblewski (Warszawa), Grzegorz Wallner (Lublin), Adam Dziki (Łódź), Wiesław Janusz Kruszewski (Gdynia), WIesław Tarnowski (Warszawa), Marek Szczepkowski (Warszawa), Kazimierz Rembiasz (Kraków), Piotr Richter (Kraków), Krzysztof Zinkiewicz (Lublin), Roman Styliński (Lublin), Wiesław Pesta (Olsztyn), Mieczysław Witzling (Wejherowo), Wojciech Zegarski (Bydgoszcz), Krzysztof Leskowski (Bydgoszcz), Andrzej Budzyński (Kraków), Maciej Michalik (Wejherowo), Roman Budziński (Wejherowo) – all attended the meeting sponsored by the Covidien company. The name of the ad hoc initiative committee was officially changed to NOTES Development Workgroup. The group is planned to function within the Section of Videosurgery of the Polish Surgical Society and no new organizational structures will be called for. NOTES workshops with training on animals have been scheduled in cooperation with Professor Brzeski from the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn for November 2008. The group has appointed members responsible for legislation of new procedures: Grzegorz Wallner, Tadeusz Wróblewski, Maciej Michalik, Marek Szczepkowski and Krzysztof Leksowski. The aim of these members will be to analyze documentation of NOSCAR – an American organization for monitoring and coordination of NOTES studies. A proposal to dedicate a separate day during the next symposium of the Videosurgery Section to NOTES issues was set forth. A manager of Covidien, Zdzisław Płoszczyński, declared that any new tools supplied to the medical market of Western Europe would be available in Poland at the same moment. At this point it was suggested that the NOTES Development Workgroup should engage other medical equipment manufacturers in financial and logistic support of NOTES development.