Debates and Dilemmas in Colorectal Surgery, a training event for surgeons, took place at King’s College London at the end of 2019. This event has been organised each year over the past 7 years for doctors who want to learn more about colorectal surgery.
The training sessions are special in that there is an international team sharing experiences about surgical innovations. This year 42 speakers from several regions took part: Europe (the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, German, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, Lithuania), Asia (Japan, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand), and North America (the USA).
One of main initiators and directors of the training event is Vilnius University abdominal surgeon Dr Narimantas Evaldas Samalavičius.
“The idea to organise training sessions in London come to Dr Joseph Nunoo-Mensah and me after he visited an international event I organised in Vilnius. We were active members of the International University of Colon and Rectal Surgeons, and we decided to share our international knowledge and experience with other surgeons. Because London has such a strong medical tradition, organising something new there was a real challenge. But we had a huge amount of support from King’s College London, which is where Dr Nunoo-Mensah works. With this help, an excellent space for training was secured and one of the main problems was solved. We had no doubt that our colleagues from around the world would agree to contribute to this event, but for our courses to be interesting in both practical and theoretical aspects and for them to be more useful than similar courses, we have always searched for engaging topics and different forms of training. Our participants’ favourite form has been debate, when well known lecturers present and discuss two completely different ways to solve a problem. Our event has been popular and attracted recognition since we first organised it in 2013, and we hope to achieve even more in the future. It’s important to add that this event is the result of a lot of hard work, and we’ve already begun planning for our meeting in 2020,” Prof Samalavičius said.
The presentation of the robotic surgery experience in Lithuania attracted a lot of interest this year. Although Klaipeda University Hospital first started robotic surgery in Lithuania and the Baltic States only a year ago (since 19 Nov. 2018), they have already completed a thousand operations. The classical da Vinci robotic system has been on the market about twenty years, but Lithuanian doctors use the Senhance robotic system. It is quite new and had not been used much for colon surgery. The report delivered by Prof Samalavičius not only proved that Lithuania could be innovative in robotic surgery but also answered many questions about the use of this robotic system for colon surgery. 
Organisers of the surgery training sessions: Dr Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (right) and Prof Narimantas Evaldas Samalavicius at the event.