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- Gynecologic Surgical Procedures
- Ovarian Cancer
- Cervical Cancer
- Postoperative complications
- SLN and Lympadenectomy
The call for advanced training to provide cancer care for women living in Latin America is necessary owing to the regional inequality faced by patients and clinicians in this low-income and middle-income region. The disparity in training strategies for gynecologic oncologists in settings where patients suffered from an increased burden of cancer1 was the leading motivation for developing a local learning event committed to influencing and supporting surgical education. The Latin American Video Workshop on Gynecologic Oncology Surgeries was the first regional summit to focus on videos covering numerous surgical procedures and addressing particular challenges tailored to local resources.
The first edition of this educational event took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina in May 2018, supported by the Hospital Italiano University Institute, and bringing together for the first time in our region leading surgeons in the field. The first workshop invited 30 speakers from nine different countries who shared the learning experience with nearly 260 attendees. In November 2022, the second workshop was held. This time it was organized in strategic alliance with the leading Latin American societies of gynecology oncology. This edition brought together 41 gynecologic oncology surgeons from Latin America and three invited surgeons from Europe. In 2 days, more than 319 attendees representing 12 Latin American countries met with mentors in gynecologic oncology, who shared their expertise through 58 surgical didactic videos. This groundbreaking team met to share and discuss the management of the current controversial scenarios of gynecologic surgery by presenting and sharing their videos with tips and tricks, new advanced technologies, and step-by-step demonstrations on how surgeons deal with challenging surgical situations.
The main goal of this biannual meeting is to introduce a new learning modality using audiovisual didactic resources provided by the demonstration of surgeries through videos.
Surgical videos covered surgical treatments for ovarian, endometrial, cervical, and vulvar cancers, as well as other procedures, such as vaginal approaches, uterine transposition, and reconstructive surgical techniques. Highlighting tips and recommendations for numerous complex surgical scenarios. These lectures focused on manual skills and compared several surgical techniques. Open surgeries and minimally invasive approaches were included, focusing on practical tips and recommendations for laparoscopic surgeries in different settings, as well as detailed tricks for performing the best robotic approach.
The workshop was endorsed by the following national societies: the Argentinian Association of Gynecological Oncology and the Argentinian Society of Gynecological Surgery, as well as alliances with more than 10 regional and international societies created to support the participation of regional surgeons and leaders, creating an authentic Latin American network. The Latin American Video Workshop has established itself as a valuable event for interacting with colleagues and friends, building a global and Latin American network, and sharing live discussions with attendees and leading surgeons in the region to grow as a team, which is an important first step in encouraging local training programs and improving gynecologic oncologist performance.
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Footnotes
Twitter @FlorenciaNoll
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.