Should We Rely on AI to Help Avoid Bias in Patient Selection for Major Surgery?

Many regard iatrogenic injuries as consequences of diagnosis or intervention actions. But inaction-not offering indicated major surgery-can also result in iatrogenic injury. This article explores some surgeons' overestimations of operative risk based on patients' race and socioeconomic status as unduly influential in their decisions about whether to perform major cancer or cardiac surgery on some patients with appropriate clinical indications. This article also considers artificial intelligence and machine learning-based clinical decision support systems that might offer more accurate, individualized risk assessment that could make patient selection processes more equitable, thereby mitigating racial and ethnic inequity in cancer and cardiac disease.

How Should Surgeons Communicate About Palliative and Curative Intentions, Purposes, and Outcomes?

How surgeons describe procedures should be accurate, precise, and concordant with patients' values. By focusing on intention rather than realistic goals, terms like curative and palliative, when applied to high-stakes operations, such as a Whipple pancreaticoduodenectomy, can be confusing to patients. This case commentary argues that surgeons' language choices can influence patients' decisions and experiences.

Who, If Not the FDA, Should Regulate Implantable Brain-Computer Interface Devices?

Implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) and other devices with potential for both therapeutic purposes and human enhancement are being rapidly developed. The distinction between therapeutic and enhancement uses of these devices is not well defined. While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rightly determines what is safe and effective, this article argues that the FDA should not make subjective, value-laden assessments about risks and benefits when it comes to approval of BCIs for therapy and enhancement. This article also argues that determining BCIs' benefits to society requires deliberations on values that the FDA is neither accustomed to making nor qualified to make. Given the inadequacy of the FDA's safe-and-effective standard to judge devices spanning the spectrum of therapy to enhancement, this article argues that BCI regulation should not be overseen by the FDA.

Ethical Rationing of Personal Protective Equipment to Minimize Moral Residue During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This article proposes systems for the fair distribution of scarce resources to healthcare providers. It builds on classic ethical structures and adapts them to the equitable distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) to clinicians at risk of contracting novel corona virus-19 (COVID-19). The article also defines systems of allocation that are generally considered unethical and are to be avoided. We emphasize that policies must be transparent, collaborative, applied equally, and have a system of accountability. It is recognized that unless the supply of PPE is quickly replenished, or viable alternatives to traditional equipment are devised in the coming days to weeks, hospitals and healthcare systems will face the difficult task of rationing PPE to at-risk clinicians. This paper suggests an ethical framework for that process.

The molecular basis of pancreatic fibrosis: common stromal gene expression in chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

OBJECTIVES: Tissue desmoplasia occurs in a number of disease states, but its molecular basis is poorly understood. To determine which genes are overexpressed in cells contained within the desmoplastic stroma of pancreatic adenocarcinoma and chronic pancreatitis, we undertook genetic profiling of microdissected tissue samples of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, chronic pancreatitis, normal pancreas, and pancreatic cancer cell lines. We observed that samples of both pancreatic adenocarcinoma and chronic pancreatitis showed elevated expression of many shared genes compared with the normal pancreas. We hypothesized that these common genes likely important in stromal production and/or function could be identified using a strategy that involved comparisons between pancreatic adenocarcinoma, chronic pancreatitis, normal pancreas, and pancreatic cancer cell lines. METHODS: We performed oligonucleotide microarray analysis of 6800 different genes expressed in 10 samples of pancreatic adenocarcinoma, 5 samples of normal pancreas, 5 samples of chronic pancreatitis, and 7 pancreatic cancer cell lines. Microarray findings were validated with RT-PCR, and immunohistochemistry was used to verify protein localization to the stromal compartment of both pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis. RESULTS: We employed a deductive comparison whereby genes expressed in the normal pancreas and pancreatic cancer cell lines were selectively eliminated from those expressed in common by pancreatic adenocarcinoma and chronic pancreatitis. This strategy identified 107 genes predicted to be expressed within cells of the stromal compartment of both pancreatic adenocarcinoma and chronic pancreatitis. CONCLUSIONS: These genes are likely important factors in epithelial-stromal signaling in pancreatic desmoplasia and may serve as diagnostic or therapeutic targets.

Unusual causes of benign biliary strictures with cholangiographic features of cholangiocarcinoma.

Focal strictures occurring at the hepatic duct confluence, or within the common hepatic duct or common bile duct in patients without a history of prior surgery in that region or stone disease, are usually thought to represent cholangiocarcinoma until proved otherwise. However, not uncommonly, patients undergo surgical exploration for a preoperative diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma, based on the cholangiographic appearance of the lesion, only to find histologically that the stricture was benign in nature. Despite sophisticated radiographic, endoscopic, and histologic studies, it is often impossible before laparotomy to distinguish malignant from benign strictures when they have the characteristic radiographic appearance of cholangiocarcinoma. Even at the risk of overtreating some benign cases, most agree that aggressive surgical resection is the treatment of choice, given the serious consequences resulting from a failure to diagnose and adequately treat cholangiocarcinoma. Four patients who presented to our institution between February 1991 and June 2000 underwent laparotomy for a preoperative diagnosis of biliary tract malignancy based on clinical presentation and cholangiographic findings. The final pathology report in all patients showed marked fibrosis and inflammation of the biliary duct without evidence of malignancy. A review of the patient data and the relevant literature identified benign causes of focal extrahepatic biliary strictures associated with concomitant disease processes in two of the four patients. We present these cases and discuss the benign etiologies with emphasis on the role of surgery in both diagnosis and treatment.

Bacillus anthracis as an agent of bioterrorism: a review emphasizing surgical treatment.

OBJECTIVE: To familiarize surgeons with the specific complications of cutaneous, gastrointestinal, inhalation, and systemic infection with Bacillus Anthracis, which may require surgical treatment. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: The recent cases of intentional exposure to Bacillus Anthracis in the United States make familiarity with the basic microbiology, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment, and control of this disease essential if mortality and morbidity is to be minimized, particularly following mass exposure. Although the treatment of Bacillus Anthracis infection is primarily medical, there are specific surgical complications with which the surgeon should be familiar. METHODS: A review of the literature was undertaken, utilizing electronic databases on infection with Bacillus Anthracis, as well as consultation with experts in this field. Emphasis was placed on the diagnosis and treatment of complications of infection that might require surgical intervention. RESULTS: Cutaneous anthrax infection results in eschar formation and massive soft tissue edema. When involving the extremities, increased compartment pressure requiring fasciotomy may result. Primary infection of the gastrointestinal tract may result in oropharyngeal edema and respiratory compromise requiring a surgical airway. Direct involvement of the lower gastrointestinal tract can result in intestinal ulceration, necrosis, bleeding, and perforation, which would require surgical exploration and resection of affected segments. Systemic sepsis, most often associated with inhalation anthrax, can cause massive ascites, electrolyte derangements, and profound shock requiring aggressive fluid resuscitation and careful hemodynamic monitoring and respiratory support. Systemic anthrax infection can also lead to gastrointestinal involvement by hematogenous dissemination, resulting in complications and requiring surgical management similar to direct gastrointestinal infection. CONCLUSIONS: Cutaneous, gastrointestinal, inhalation and systemic infection with Bacillus Anthracis can result in complications which would require familiarity with the pathogenesis and manifestations of this disease in order to recognize and treat promptly and successfully by surgical intervention.