Read some reflections from one of the attendees a Cadaveric Hernia course. The course was held in June 2023 in Prague.
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Name: Tomas Kural, MD, PhD
Hospital: Arberlandklinik Viechtach, Bavaria, Germany
Job: Senior Consultant, Deputy Head of Surgical Department
Specialty: General and Visceral Surgery, 5 years of experience after the Board Certification Exam
I have been working at my current position in a hospital in the Bavarian Forest for over two years. It is a rural region where many people work in agriculture, cattle breeding or forestry. These are persons who work hard physically. That is why many people come to our hospital not only with locomotor system disorders, but also with hernias. Due to the high number of patients with hernias, it became clear to me shortly after I took up my current position that these patients need not only to be well treated and operated on, but also that if the patients with hernias are satisfied with the results of our work, it can increase interest about our hospital. For this reason, I decided for an intensive education in the field of abdominal wall surgery and began to purposefully attend trainings and conferences related to this topic.
Considering that I come from the Czech Republic and the hospital where I work is located near the Czech-German border, I was delighted when I learned that it was possible to take part in this cadaver course in Prague. In addition, I personally know the main organiser of this course, Dr. Barbara East, who informed me about this course, so I didn’t have to think long about my participation. I stayed in my apartment in Pilsen, which is only about an hour’s drive from Prague.
The field of abdominal wall surgery is one of the fastest growing surgical fields. In order to perform high-quality hernia surgery and obtain good long-term results, in-depth knowledge of anatomy, histology, and physiology is required. A three-dimensional understanding of the abdominal wall anatomy is not easy; the individual layers are often damaged, and clarification the abdominal wall anatomy impossible without sound anatomical knowledge. I really enjoyed the time with the experts as Dr. Barbora East, Dr. David Ross or Dr. Andrew de Beaux (and others). I really appreciated the fact that I could spend two days right at the dissection table with such experts and could exchange opinions and knowledge with them for several hours every day.
The greatest benefit for my further practice was certainly the opportunity to perform a detailed dissection of the lateral abdominal wall muscles, which helped me to understand how to perform complicated procedures such as transversus abdominis release or anterior/posterior component separation. Dr. de Beaux showed us also the Pauli’s technique for parastomal hernia repair. All in all, I was really enthralled with this cadaveric course of abdominal wall surgery and I can highly recommend it to any surgeon who wants to better understand the complex anatomy of the abdominal wall and thereby improve the results of their daily clinical work.
Best regards,
Tomas
