Keeping Up with Continuing Education

Lincoln surgical surgeons 11 30 16

Lincoln Surgical Associates surgeons Douglas B. Aach, MD, FACS; D. Scott Crouch, MD, FACS; and James J. Clanahan, MD, FACS, have recently attended a number of continuing education courses.

Dr. Douglas B. Aach

Dr. Aach attended a refresher course in general surgery at Washington University, which discussed safety principles in performing laparoscopic cholecystectomy, conservative management of small bowel obstruction, and an update on indications for fine-needle aspiration of thyroid nodules and molecular testing panels.

"Thyroid fine-needle aspirations that show indeterminate findings carry a risk of malignancy. However, on subsequent surgical excision, most are not cancerous," Dr. Aach said. "Molecular genetic evaluation of these indeterminate lesions is being studied as a way to determine which of these lesions are really cancerous and do need to be removed after this biopsy and those indeterminate lesions that are not cancer and do not need to be removed."

"The results of this testing are not yet diagnostic but promising, so it's possible that some day a genetic test could be done to determine if a thyroid mass is cancerous and needs to be removed, decreasing the number of thyroid surgeries done for benign lesions," Dr. Aach said.

Dr. D. Scott Crouch

Dr. Crouch attended a training course for colon rectal robotic surgery, a course for physician executives on medical staff management, and a spine exposure symposium. At the spine exposure symposium Dr. Crouch said, "We studied safer techniques for better patient outcomes as these procedures have become standardized under the direction of national experts."

Dr. James J. Clanahan

Dr. Clanahan attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, which included:

  • A one-day course in advanced breast imaging and the role of current and emerging tools to assist in patient evaluation and management.
  • A symposium on the latest recommendations for genetic evaluation for high-risk breast patients.

"The treatment of the axilla containing metastatic breast cancer lymph nodes continues to evolve," Dr. Clanahan said. "We have gone from removing all the lymph nodes on every patient to removing many fewer lymph nodes with targeted sentinel biopsy."

He learned that the management of the axilla containing metastatic lymph nodes is changing. "If these lymph nodes convert to negative after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, select patients can be offered more limited axillary surgery with sentinel lymph node biopsy rather than total axillary dissection. This significantly decreases the risk of developing arm lymphedema. I can now discuss this option with patients. Before this, we always had to have axillary dissection," he said.

Committed to Patient Care

Lincoln Surgical is committed to continuing medical education to provide the most up-to-date surgical care to your patients. If you'd like to further discuss what our surgeons learned during their CME events, please call Lincoln Surgical at 618.277.7400.