What is the path to do only surgery research?

[Dr Meow]

Just wondering, is there such a thing as someone who only does surgery research and no human patients? OR works with human patients for say 5 years, retires, and then does only surgery research?

Is this a phD or DO/MD route?
If DO/MD is this a general surgery route?

In academia, I've never heard of surgery research and yet, someone must have invented these surgery techniques.

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[Apollyon]

Just wondering, is there such a thing as someone who only does surgery research and no human patients? OR works with human patients for say 5 years, retires, and then does only surgery research?

Is this a phD or DO/MD route?
If DO/MD is this a general surgery route?

In academia, I've never heard of surgery research and yet, someone must have invented these surgery techniques.

If you are doing anything human, you need an MD/DO. When I was a resident, there were several folks that did the residency (surgery or IM), then never went to the clinic ever again.

I don't know of anything beyond basic science bench research in surgery that doesn't involve actual, life sized, living humans.

That said, I'm not a surgeon.

 

[Dr Meow]

If you are doing anything human, you need an MD/DO. When I was a resident, there were several folks that did the residency (surgery or IM), then never went to the clinic ever again.

I don't know of anything beyond basic science bench research in surgery that doesn't involve actual, life sized, living humans.

That said, I'm not a surgeon.

hmm yeah. Surgery research is such a mysterious topic.
Like how, where, and who does that sort of research? I doubt it directly goes from mice to humans.

 

[Apollyon]

hmm yeah. Surgery research is such a mysterious topic.
Like how, where, and who does that sort of research? I doubt it directly goes from mice to humans.

Again, not a surgeon, but, I don't think it's that dramatic or mysterious - I mean, just pick up a journal. It's just that, for the most part, people that do residency don't want to do research, but, see patients.

 

[mikeGR]

To be a surgeon, you need to complete a clinical residency. After completing residency, the vast majority go on to start the clinical practice.

In academia, in addition to the clinical practice, surgeons may assume additional roles in varying degrees, including research, teaching, and admin. There are surgeons who do no research at all, and surgeon-scientists who spend 80% of their time doing research and 20% seeing patients. If someone wanted to do research full-time, it would be feasible, however research is costly and without a clinical practice (or another stable source of funding) one cannot sustain a research lab (let alone their own salary).

So, to answer your question, surgical research is advanced by surgeons (mostly in academia) who are also engaged in research.

 

[eteshoe]

Weren't most surgical techniques invented to improve surgical outcomes on actual patients? I mean historically, surgical techniques were advanced via -for a lack of a better way of saying this - trial and error on humans, dogs, pigs, etc.

P.S. I'm not a surgeon

 

[deleted50541]

It's pretty broad to say "surgery research". It encompasses so many areas: refinement/advancement in techniques, outcomes, basic science, surgical education, cost analysis, social equity, etc. Is there any particular area you're interested in?

One can certainly be involved in surgical research and not see patients. You don't even have to be in medicine, e.g. biomedical device industry. But as someone already said, it's typically practicing academic surgeons who are driving and directing the research.

 

[Lem0nz]

OP your post made it seem like you're asking who's researching/inventing actual surgical technique, as in - inventing new ways to do surgery.

The answer is very few people do that, and the ones who do are practicing surgeons who are experts in their fields an have 10-20+ years of doing surgery under their belts and yes - they generally do new surgical techniques on humans. They may conceive of an idea, practice it in a lab on an animal and/or cadaver, and then proceed to do it on a human, but they are extremely high volume or extremely narrowly tailored surgeons that do lots of surgery. They are not sitting and inventing this stuff in a lab.

If you're instead asking about equipment like who invented the Da Vinci robot or who invented the Lynx for reflux, and stuff like that - surgeons generally working hand in hand with engineers. Not medical doctors in a lab.

Surgeons who work in a lab tend to more often than not be involved in cancer research (majority) or maybe transplant or a surgical subspecialty working on a rare disease (think neurosurgeons trying to cure a very specific rare illness). Outside of cancer I do not think it is the normal for most surgeons to have more than 20% of their practice be in research. At least for the general surgery sub-disciplines (vascular, MIS, bari/foregut, endocrine, colorectal, trauma) the proportion who run a lab is probably at best 1%. Maybe its different for ENT/ortho/urology, but I really doubt it, suspect they are also around 1%, as most surgeons simply do research while having a clinical practice if that is their passion. NSG is probably the same but I could envision it being slightly higher, but I genuinely don't know. In cancer, those who have a lab are usually working on immunotherapy/chemotherapy/molecular targeted therapies and not actually inventing new ways to do surgery. They're working on augmenting therapy before and after surgery, potentially using surgery as a deliver vehicle for therapy, etc.

There is a 2-3 year surgical oncology research program at the NIH which is composed mostly of surgeons who now strictly do bench research. Honestly, I would classify them more as medical oncologists/immunologists than actual surgeons at this point, but that route does exist. It is an incredibly slim minority and a rare breed of human that takes that road. But they're crazy geniuses.

 

[Dr Meow]

OP your post made it seem like you're asking who's researching/inventing actual surgical technique, as in - inventing new ways to do surgery.

The answer is very few people do that, and the ones who do are practicing surgeons who are experts in their fields an have 10-20+ years of doing surgery under their belts and yes - they generally do new surgical techniques on humans. They may conceive of an idea, practice it in a lab on an animal and/or cadaver, and then proceed to do it on a human, but they are extremely high volume or extremely narrowly tailored surgeons that do lots of surgery. They are not sitting and inventing this stuff in a lab.

If you're instead asking about equipment like who invented the Da Vinci robot or who invented the Lynx for reflux, and stuff like that - surgeons generally working hand in hand with engineers. Not medical doctors in a lab.

Surgeons who work in a lab tend to more often than not be involved in cancer research (majority) or maybe transplant or a surgical subspecialty working on a rare disease (think neurosurgeons trying to cure a very specific rare illness). Outside of cancer I do not think it is the normal for most surgeons to have more than 20% of their practice be in research. At least for the general surgery sub-disciplines (vascular, MIS, bari/foregut, endocrine, colorectal, trauma) the proportion who run a lab is probably at best 1%. Maybe its different for ENT/ortho/urology, but I really doubt it, suspect they are also around 1%, as most surgeons simply do research while having a clinical practice if that is their passion. NSG is probably the same but I could envision it being slightly higher, but I genuinely don't know. In cancer, those who have a lab are usually working on immunotherapy/chemotherapy/molecular targeted therapies and not actually inventing new ways to do surgery. They're working on augmenting therapy before and after surgery, potentially using surgery as a deliver vehicle for therapy, etc.

There is a 2-3 year surgical oncology research program at the NIH which is composed mostly of surgeons who now strictly do bench research. Honestly, I would classify them more as medical oncologists/immunologists than actual surgeons at this point, but that route does exist. It is an incredibly slim minority and a rare breed of human that takes that road. But they're crazy geniuses.

Thanks. You absolutely answered my question about who does that. Definitely a MD/DO route.
Yes, I was asking about actual surgical techniques for humans and not medical technologies or cancer research. Just PURE surgical techniques.

And your answer is that very few people do that. But now I'm wondering where does that happen? Is it in hospitals, government, or private industry?
I've been wondering about this. It's pretty cool then that so few people developed nearly all the pure surgical techniques that all the surgeons use.

 

[Lem0nz]

Most surgical techniques have been around since like, 1980 or earlier. We just make small revisions to them and get more aggressive (cancer and transplant) or less invasive/smaller holes (everyone else). It happens wherever a surgeon has an idea to do something stupid that somehow miraculously turns out to work. Usually its at an academic hospital but can be at any hospital.

These days it tends to occur more in Asia where there are less rigorous constraints on informed consent. Not saying this is good or bad, but korea/china can just do weirder more crazy things on people and its more accepted there than it is in Europe/America. In those settings its at a university hospital in Asia.

In the US I can really only comment on cancer and it tends to happen at Mayo/MDA/MSKCC by world expert surgeons who do ONLY that type of surgery (like a pancreas surgeon who doesn't operate on literally anything else, for example) and they are looking at ways to be more aggressive. But anyone can try something. You just need an idea that is only mildly bat**** crazy, won't obviously hurt someone, and a willing patient and IRB. That particular combination of things can be hard to find in America.

 

[Dr Meow]

Thank you! Your answers have been very valuable to me.

 

[Dave1980]

Just wondering, is there such a thing as someone who only does surgery research and no human patients? OR works with human patients for say 5 years, retires, and then does only surgery research?

Is this a phD or DO/MD route?
If DO/MD is this a general surgery route?

In academia, I've never heard of surgery research and yet, someone must have invented these surgery techniques.

you can't do "surgery research" really without being a working surgeon.

also if you don't produce RVUs you won't get paid that surgeon ca$$$$$$h