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ΣΥΝΈΝΤΈΥΞΗ
Tεύχος 33 | Iανουάριος - Φεβρουάριος 2025
Η ακόλουθη συνέντευξη πραγματοποιήθηκε μέσω Zoom. Απομαγνητοφώνηση & επιμέλεια κειμένου: Θεόδωρος Σπίνος, ειδικευόμενος Ουρολόγος & Φίλιππος Νικητάκης, μέλη συντακτικής ομάδας του Newsletter.
Theodoros Spinos (T.S.): How did you decide to become a urologist?
Cesare Marco Scoffone (C.M.S.): Thank you for this question! To be honest, Urology was not really my first choice. When I was very young I knew I wanted to become a surgeon, but only later in my life I met one person - who has unfortunately passed away recently - who pushed me to explore the urological field. Therefore, during the first two years of my residency, when I was working in a small hospital, I jumped into urological surgery. In summary, initially I was focused on Surgery, while Urology was the next step.
Filippos Nikitakis (F.N.): Based on your experience, what character traits do you believe are essential for a good surgeon?
C.M.S.: A good surgeon should be calm, rational, clear- headed and unemotional, always prompt to understand the possible complications during the surgery and to find quick solutions to the intraoperative problems. Additionally, a good surgeon should be able to create a good team (of other surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and scrub nurses) around him, able to understand the clinical situation before, during and after surgery, and to collaborate successfully, because I think that surgery is not a one-man show, but rather a team work. In fact, the ultimate goal of surgery is the interest for the patient!
F.N.: Do you believe that laparoscopic skills can help someone integrate more easily into endourology and endoscopic procedures, and vice versa?
C.M.S.: Yes, I think that surgery, especially endoscopic surgery, is a wide field in which, when you are skilled in one kind of surgery, you can also be skilled in the other one. I think that the fundamental difference is that sometimes endourology is a little bit more difficult, because you are working in a single channel. The field that you are working on is very small, and you don't have a lot of space around you. Moreover, you
are passing through natural orifices, that you have to respect, avoiding damages. In laparoscopy, you create artificial holes, and you simulate a little bit more what we did in the past in open surgery. So, at the end, we made this surgery minimally-invasive for the patient, but surgical times are quite similar to open surgery. In any case, in endourology you always have to maximally respect the anatomy. For example, if you pass through the ureter, the first goal is to respect it and avoid its damage.
T.S.: To the best of our knowledge, you are one of the first urologists who described the ECIRS procedure. Could you tell us the story behind your first ECIRS procedure? How did your technique evolve along the years?
C.M.S.: I have to underline that I was not the first one to describe this technique. Actually, the first one was Gaspar Ibarluzea from Bilbao (Spain), my master.
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