Page 63 - NEWSLETTER_31

For that, you need to look to the person next to you, who's empowered you to do all these things. That's your significant other. That's your partner in life. That's the person who believed in you when nobody believed in you. That's the person who, when you got knocked down, picked you up, dusted you off and put you back into the fray. That's the person who, when you came home at 11-12 o'clock at night, got up and made sure that you were taken care of. Everybody thanks the people in the room, and then at the end, they will thank their partner, their wife, their significant other. I thought it was important, at that moment, that the first person that really needed to be thanked was Carol, my wife. Without her, I would have gone off the rails long time ago and all those things that led up to that night would not have occurred. As I tell our residents, marrying well is the best thing you can do. You really want to marry somebody who you can't believe that they would want to marry you. They're just so much better than you are. That's the most important thing. Family comes first. Academics and the profession are really important, but not as important as family. It's a harsh comment, but I do believe that if you succeed in academics, and in that success, through fault of your own, you lose your family, you failed. Don't lose sight of that. Your partner is number one and family always comes first. Everything else follows.
F.N.: What do you anticipate as the next technological advancements in the field of minimally-invasive surgery in Urology?
Prof. Ralph V. Clayman: True robotics! This is not something you want to hear, but I believe it's going to happen. Given the ability of robotics, advanced imaging, and AI, a new age in surgery is not too far distant. Our robot today is basically a master slave machine, whereby you move your hand this way, the robot moves this way, you do this, the robot mimics. A true robot would be the following: you've taken out the prostate, you've marked the bladder neck, you've marked the urethral margin, you press a button and the robot then creates the anastomosis with each suture 2 mm back beyond the margin of the urethra and 2 mm beyond the margin of the bladder, each suture 2 mm apart and each suture pulled to the exact same tension and it is all done in 10 seconds. That's the future.
The robot can work incredibly fast and never make a mistake. It's like the knife scene in the 1986 movie "Alien" where the knife wielding robot is moving at light speed between Billy Paxton’s fingers. The robot never even grazes his outstretched fingers, because it's programmed that way. It is the same thing with the anastomosis. In that same vein, I have a slide that shows a surgeon, and next to the surgeon is a dog (I love dogs). The caption on the slide was that, ”In the OR of the future there will be a surgeon and there will be a dog. The surgeon will be there to feed the dog; the dog will be there to stop the surgeon from touching any of the buttons.” You're going to see fully automated surgery in your lifetime. What we do as urologists in the operating room may be diminished over time. Regardless, the beauty of Urology is that we are not just technicians. Indeed, if all of our technical things went away, we would still be urologists. You would still be taking care of patients with cancer and stones and urinary tract infections. The beauty of Urology is that you're a true physician. As one of my mentors, Eugene Bernstein, noted, the best surgeon is really “an internist who has the ability to cut". As time goes by that need to cut would and should get less and less but we will always be urologists.
F.N.: If you could change one aspect of modern surgical practices, what would that be and why? Prof. Ralph V. Clayman: This is going to be another unpopular answer. I believe that surgeons, like pilots, need to prove their mettle every year. Pilots have to
Tεύχος 31 | Σεπτέμβριος - Οκτώβριος 2024
63