NEWS FROM EAES (European Association for Endoscopic Surgery)

The Euronotes Registry
by M. Morino, A. Arezzo
Department of Digestive, ColoRectal, Oncologic and Minimal Invasive Surgery, University of Turin, Italy. 

Since its broad propagation in 2006/2007, the concept of natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) got widespread interest both in the surgical and gastroenterological communities. In a few years NOTES techniques, either transgastric, or transvaginal, or transrectal have been thoroughly described both in animals and in humans. These include appendectomy [1], cholecystectomy [2] and peritoneoscopy [3] mainly but even tubal ligation [4], oophorectomy [5], colectomy [6], nephrectomy [7] and gastric sleeve [8] although in a vast majority of cases this was done under hybrid conditions. Primary enthusiasm, however, was soon followed by frustration on both sides, since the technological barriers which had been precisely described in the so-called “white paper” [9] early in the development of NOTES turned out to be by far more difficult to overcome than expected.