Dr. Marco Scarci: never settle for easy life
Expert introduction
Dr. Marco Scarci, MD, Department of Thoracic Surgery, University College London Hospital, London, UK. Dr. Scarci undertook his specialist training in Italy, Malta, Essex Cardiothoracic Centre and Guy’s and St Thomas. He spent 6 months between University of Toronto and McMaster University for a fellowship in minimally invasive surgery. Dr. Scarci’s practice is in pure thoracic surgery. He works closely with a large team including other surgeons, specialist nurses, radiologists and physicians to provide together with them the best outcome for patients. His key focus is minimally invasive surgery.
Most of Dr. Scarci’s work is now performed through single port approach after visiting Dr. Diego Gonzalez Rivas, a pioneer in this type of approach. He is currently chairing the ESTS chest wall and pleural disease working group and leading on the development of the European Chest Wall Database. Dr. Scarci is also a member of the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence preoperative tests working group.
Editor’s notes
The 4th International VATS Symposium was successfully held from October 20th to 21st in London Physician College. Many outstanding thoracic surgeons gathered here to discuss current application, advanced techniques and future development of minimally invasive surgery. During this meeting, Dr. Marco Scarci made an excellent speech on the topic “Uniportal VATS: Hilar Dissection”. It was our great honor to invite Dr. Scarci to do a short interview after meeting (Figures 1,2).
During the interview, Dr. Scarci pointed out that this is the 4th year to hold such a meeting. The meeting is growing up not only in quality and the numbers of participants, but also the innovation of covered topics in the symposium. In the past years, they gradually shift the emphasis from purely VATS procedure, bi-portal surgery then uniportal surgery and to the robot surgery this year.
Referring to the Uniportal VATS, Dr. Scarci thinks that this technique is mature and perfectly producible, but they haven’t enough articles or data to support this technique. So he suggested thoracic surgeons to create more visible evidence like publishing medical papers after finishing the case researches.
Dr. Scarci loves surgery very much. Curing patients and helping them remove from pain completely make him feel satisfied. And this is the reason let him always move forward in his professional life. Dr. Scarci also provides some suggestions to the young thoracic surgeons. Firstly, they should try to participate in more international meetings and communicate with more people as possible. Secondly, they should keep doing every day and never settle for easy life. Finally, they need to be stronger in clinic, academic and education.
Interview questions
- As one of the co-directors, do you think what the theme of this symposium is? And would you like to share some highlights for this symposium with our readers?
- Could you give a brief introduction of the presentation you did yesterday?
- Based on your experience, what remain the issues in Uniportal VATS? And what are your opinions? (For example, how to solve these problems? What surgeons should do?)
- We learnt that you have keen interest in medical education, so what do you think should be the focus of medical education? (For example for those who want to be thoracic surgeons)
- What’s your greatest sense of satisfaction of being a surgeon?
- Do you have any suggestions for the young thoracic surgeons?
- Could you kindly use one sentence to summarize this meeting? And do you have any plans for the next years’ symposium? If yes, what would be the topics you want to discuss?
Acknowledgements
None.
Footnote
Conflicts of Interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
References
- Zhang T. Dr. Marco Scarci: never settle for easy life. Asvide 2017;4:564. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/1883
(Science Editor: Tracy Zhang, JOVS, jovs@amepc.org)
Cite this article as: Zhang T. Dr. Marco Scarci: never settle for easy life. J Vis Surg 2017;3:183.
