Surgery

In 2000, Gail McDaniel helped Cook launch a new technology: small intestinal submucosa (SIS). Sixteen years later, Gail noticed an incisional hernia in the spot where she had previous surgery. When her surgeon told her that she would need a surgical repair, he mentioned that he’d need to reinforce the repair with a mesh.

In 2014, Cook Biotech engineer Mike Taylor was working on Zenapro®, a hybrid hernia-repair device. But he faced a challenge. Brian Spicer, the Zenapro product manager, asked him to engineer the product in a size larger than anything he had made before. “There [were] certainly a few minutes of just sheer panic,” Mike said. Brian kept our…

In 2012, a 43-year-old woman went into the operating room at QEII Hospital in Brisbane, Australia for an ordinary gynecological procedure. While in recovery, she felt increasing pain. Soon she was in multiple organ failure.

Two surgeons from the U.S. travelled to London to debate at the inaugural Abdominal Wall Reconstruction Europe conference. Their topic: Traditional laparoscopy vs. robot-assisted techniques for abdominal wall surgery.

Six-month interim results from the first clinical study on the Zenapro Hybrid Hernia Repair Device were released at SAGES 2016 in Boston. This is the first clinical study on the use of a hybrid hernia-repair device in humans.

Some biologic grafts are associated with lower rates of failure or infection than others. Biodesign is a non–cross-linked, non-dermis biologic graft technology that is completely remodeled into strong, well-vascularized tissue.

Through our partnerships with surgeons and hospitals, we have developed these three technologies to be tools you can trust for ventral hernia repair.

These are answers to the questions we hear about securing Zenapro in a hospital's supply chain.

Watch the surgical placement of a probe, learn intraoperative troubleshooting tricks, see how a probe is removed, and more.

Education is everything. If there was more information for patients, even a leaflet in the reception of a hospital ‘If you have hernias...’ My wife said if she had seen a leaflet with something like a list of options available for hernia patients on it, she would have moved hell and high water to make sure we got to explore every option.

I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the summer of 2010, after a biopsy. I was asked to come into the hospital and meet with a consultant. He said to me, ‘I’m sorry Tony but you have prostate cancer and it’s pretty bad’. I went outside, sat on the steps and cried. I had been diagnosed with diabetes the year before and this was not the news I needed to hear.

Nashville, fondly called “Music City,” hosted this year’s SAGES congress. And I was lucky to attend, along with a few engineers, sales representatives, and product managers.

Barb is an expert on this stuff. She’s been working with submucosa at Cook Biotech for 12 years. And she’s been raising livestock at her small farm for longer than that. She’s a busy woman, and she stays motivated thanks to her passion for helping others.

Vista events are designed that way: to focus on education, not on selling products. Jodie O’Bryan leads Vista events in Australia. “The overall goals of the training labs,” she says, “are to foster collaborative partnerships, provide clinically relevant education, and provide product support.”

Many companies tout words like ‘collaboration’ or ‘partnership,’ when talking about their relationship with customers. We, too, place high value on our partnerships with physicians. But what does partnership mean to us here at Cook?

What I like most about the ACS congress is that the session topics are so varied. In the ‘Abdominal Wall Reconstruction’ panel, surgeons talked (sometimes passionately) about what type of reinforcement material works best in certain cases.

Cook Surgery representatives like Raechel work hard. Some days, she hits the road at 3:30 a.m. and drives for four hours to attend early-morning cases. It’s worth it, she says, to hear a surgeon say that a patient is doing well. We asked her about Surgery’s newest hernia-repair device, Zenapro.

This week, we officially launch Zenapro, the first tissue reinforcement device with both synthetic and biologic components. Zenapro is a combination of ultra‐lightweight polypropylene and small intestinal submucosa (SIS). Once implanted, the patient’s body can remodel the SIS into new, healthy tissue. The polypropylene will provide permanent support to the hernia site. To learn more…

We are not satisfied with the state of surgery today. We won’t be satisfied until every person who goes into an OR for a surgical procedure leaves with a positive outcome.

First of all, I’d like to commend SAGES on its selection of venue. Salt Lake City is one of the most picturesque cities in the country. It seems that everywhere you look is a beautiful, postcard-worthy view.

Many sessions and symposia at this year’s ASGBI Congress focus on expanding the abilities of the surgeon. These are a few events that have already caught our eye.

It’s the first day of the annual meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES). Cook Surgery is here at the meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Surgeons at the Lili Valley Clinic Foundation in Cali, Colombia, successfully transplanted a living lobe of liver. This procedure was the first of its kind in Latin America.

"Once," says engineer Ryan Bernstein, "We had to find a way to attach a bead to one of our products. We sat there, suturing, attaching different ways until we figured out how to attach it. That’s still what we do: We sit in a lab and hash out different ideas until we get it done."

Our first patient had a fistula at the bladder neck that was caused by an obstructed labor 10 years ago. Imagine constantly leaking urine for 10 years! The obstructed labor also resulted the complete destruction of her uterus.

With almost 2,500 delegates, the meeting drew bigger crowds than anticipated, reflecting the growing interest in bariatric surgery and the increasing problems with obesity around the world.

Did you solve our crossword puzzle? Check your work on this answer key. If you’re a lifelong learner (as most of you crossword-solving surgeons are), take a look at the VistaSM event schedule. You could get experience performing component separation and share stories with your fellow surgeons. Find a Vista event near you here.