The annual event offers a forum of the latest medical, endoscopic and surgical treatments of gastrointestinal, hepatology, IBD and colorectal diseases, with an impressive mix of lectures and live cases broadcast from the state-of-the-art Chao Family Comprehensive Digestive Disease Center located in Orange, California.
I'm Brian Smith. I'm one of the forgotten bariatric surgeons here at Uciuc Health. My background is in upper G I malignancies as well as uh anti reflux surgery and bariatric surgery. We're gathered here today for our 16th annual Digestive Health Institute G I symposium. This is where we get together gastroenterologists and surgeons and even some oncologists in a multidisciplinary fashion centered around all of the disease processes that affect the, the the gut. Among many of the topics we're covering today include some of the advances that we are seeing in the realm of esophageal cancer in its treatment. Many of those are focused around the endoscopic approaches. We actually were able to see a live case this morning of Dr Sam Marina doing an endoscopic submucosal dissection, which is an endoscopic removal of an early esophageal cancer depending on the pathology of that case. That patient may actually have a curative procedure endoscopically and be able to avoid my knife and having an esophagectomy. Some of the exciting advances that we're seeing in oesophageal cancer include not only the ability to take out early cancers endoscopically, but also our more consistent use of neoadjuvant chemo radiation which is allowing us to treat patients early on with chemo and radiation shrink their tumors down and give us a better chance at an R zero or a complete resection at the time that we take them for surgery. So with our minimally invasive approaches for esophageal cancer, we're able to take patients oftentimes with fairly advanced locally advanced disease, dial them back to something much more manageable operatively through neoadjuvant chemo radiation, provide them a relatively minimally invasive operation that gets them in and out of the hospital and back on their feet expeditiously in time for them to go finish up their adjuvant therapy. And what we're really seeing are some of the best results we've ever had in terms of long term survival of patients after the diagnosis of esophageal cancer.
