Dr. Mahmoud Ismail: not just love the uniportal VATS technique but more for the benefit of patients
The 3rd International Uniportal VATS Course jointly organized by the University Hospital Charité in Berlin, Germany, the University Hospital in Coruña, Spain and the Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Tonji University Shanghai, China, was held successfully in Campus Charité Mitte, Berlin, Germany from March 16th to 18th, 2016. During the course, Dr. Mahmoud Ismail, director of the Uniportal VATS Course, not only gave a great presentation on “Uniportal VATS: lobectomy”, but more importantly, made an impressive work for the whole course, which is as well a big move for the development of uniportal VATS in Europe. During the WETLAB in the third day, the Editorial Office of Journal of Visualized Surgery (JOVS) had the great honor to have an interview with Dr. Ismail (Figure 1).
MU Dr. Dr. Mahmoud Ismail is a graduate of the Charles University Prague, faculty of medicine in Plzen. After finishing his medical studies he spent 19 months in the department of experimental surgery at the Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin where he performed basic research on angioneogenesis. He received his specialization in general and in thoracic surgery at the Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He is actually the coordinator of the Department of Thoracic Surgery at the Charité.
MU Dr. Dr. Mahmoud Ismail started his minimally invasive surgical experience with robotic surgery in 2003. Since that he published several articles about robotic surgery mainly about his experience with robotic thymectomy. He became a reviewer of several cited journals. He played a major role in organizing the Thoracic Master Class Hands Session at the ISMICS Berlin 2010 as well as Organization and performing Live Uniportal VATS and robotic thymectomy at the ISMICS Berlin 2015.
He was the first thoracic surgeon performing uniportal VATS lobectomies in Germany since 2012. He published his first experience with uniportal VATS in 2014. After that he played a major role together with Dr. Diego Gonzalez-Rivas in spreading this technique in Germany. He was the director of the 2nd International Uniportal VATS Course—Live Surgery and Wetlab 2015 and director of the 3rd International Uniportal VATS Course—Live Surgery and Wetlab 2016.
In the interview, Dr. Ismail told us that nowadays uniportal VATS is getting more and more popular due to its minimally invasive effect and its development in Germany is also getting faster. He also took the case number of uniportal VATS in University Hospital Charité for example—almost twenty times than usual, a solid evidence of the delight future of uniportal VATS in Europe!
At the end of the interview, when talking about the attraction of uniportal VATS, Dr. Ismail passionately gave us his answer—I’m not doing uniportal VATS only because I love it but more importantly because of the benefit of our patients (Figure 2)!
Acknowledgements
None.
Footnote
Conflicts of Interest: The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
References
- Gao S. Interview with Dr. Mahmoud Ismail. Asvide 2016;3:198. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/articles/954
(Science Editor: Skylar Gao, JOVS, jovs@amepc.org)
Cite this article as: Gao S. Dr. Mahmoud Ismail: not just love the uniportal VATS technique but more for the benefit of patients. J Vis Surg 2016;2:81.
