Establishing a Contextually Appropriate Laparoscopic Program in Resource-restricted Environments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In Brief Objective: Differences in opinion exist as to the feasibility of establishing sustainable laparoscopic programs in resource-restricted environments. At the request of local surgeons and the Ministry of Health in Botswana, a training program was established to assist local colleagues with laparoscopic surgery. We reviewed our multifaceted and evolving international collaboration and highlighted those factors that have helped or hindered this program. Methods: From 2006 to 2012, a training program consisting of didactic teaching, telesimulation, Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery certification, yearly workshops, and ongoing mentorship was established. We assessed the clinical outcomes of patients who underwent laparoscopic cholecystectomy, comparing them with patients who underwent open cholecystectomy, and measured the indicators of technical independence and program sustainability. Results: Twelve surgeons participated in the training program and performed 270 of 288 laparoscopic cholecystectomies. Ninety-six open cases were performed by these and 5 additional surgeons. Fifteen laparoscopic cases were converted (5.2%). The median postoperative length of hospital stay was significantly shorter in the laparoscopic group than in the open group (1 day vs 7 days, P < 0.001). As the training program progressed, the proportion of laparoscopic cases completed without an expatriate surgeon present increased significantly (P = 0.001). Conclusions: A contextually appropriate long-term partnership may assist with laparoscopic upskilling of colleagues in low- and middle-income countries. This type of collaboration promotes local ownership and may translate into better patient outcomes associated with laparoscopic surgery. In resource-restricted environments, the factors threatening sustainability may differ from those in high-income countries and should be identified and addressed. At the request of the Ministry of Health in Botswana, a multifaceted international collaboration was established to assist with laparoscopic surgery. For the chosen index operation, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, prospective data showed morbidity, mortality, and conversion to open rates comparable with those in high-income countries. Program strengths and barriers are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".