Endoscopy Insights
22 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsEndoscopy Insights is a podcast devoted to conversations with thought leaders in flexible and single-use endoscopy. In each episode we’ll explore the ways different clinical and technological innovations are moving the field of endoscopy forward.
Endoscopy Insights is brought to you by Single-Use Endoscopy, part of the Ambu Learning Center. Ambu has been bringing healthcare solutions of the future to life since 1937.
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Episodes
A Day in the Life of an ENT Resident
December 09, 2022 17:39 - 21 minutes - 29 MBDr. Wesley Stepp is a resident at the University of North Carolina’s Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. UNC is a national leader in training the next generation of ear, nose and throat surgeons and Dr. Stepp brings an interesting perspective to this kind of work. Not just because his first exposure to otolaryngology was having sinus surgery in his teens, which proved life changing and set him on his eventual academic and professional course. But also because in his work to...
Comparing Single-Use and Reusable Bronchoscopes for Interventional Pulmonology
November 03, 2022 12:20 - 20 minutes - 30.3 MBThe conventional wisdom in interventional pulmonology has long been that reusable bronchoscopes perform better than their single-use counterparts, but new research counters that thinking. A recent study, part of a poster presentation at the World Congress for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology (WCBIP) 2022 in Marseille, France, found that three of four single-use flexible bronchoscopes that were tested performed better in flexion and extension than reusable competitors. The late...
Navigating Career Paths and Challenges in Flexible Endoscopy
October 20, 2022 13:00 - 15 minutes - 22.5 MBDr. Marybeth Spanarkel describes GI endoscopy as a labor of love. You can hear the passion in her voice when she talks about performing a procedure and the gratification that comes from getting an immediate medical answer to the clinical question that’s being asked. Spanarkel, however, suffered a career-ending neck injury after 28 years in private practice in North Carolina. Without full strength in her right arm, she lost the ability to perform endoscopy procedures and provide those much-...
Right Pocket, Left Pocket: Achieving Buy-In for Single-Use
October 06, 2022 13:00 - 23 minutes - 31.7 MBHealthcare staff shortages, while not new, have spawned a world today where it can take five hours to get an X-ray for a dislocated elbow and another two to get pain medication for the injury. Ambulances sometimes wait eight hours to drop off a patient, and nurses work 12- to 16-hour shifts, without a break. About 400,000 healthcare workers have left jobs since the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Throughout...
Leading with Value to the Patient
September 15, 2022 11:43 - 12 minutes - 17 MBMedical device suppliers and group purchasing organizations are teaming to bring new healthcare innovations such as single-use endoscopes to hospitals and health systems. By creating specific single-use endoscope categories for their members, these healthcare improvement companies can help accelerate the transition from reusable devices to disposable ones. But capitalizing on an opportunity to expand capacity and avoid costly and unnecessary expenses associated with workflow management and...
Calculating the Total Cost of Care
September 01, 2022 12:38 - 17 minutes - 24.7 MBTransitioning from reusable to single-use endoscopes has obvious infection control benefits and even provides workflow and efficiency advantages — but the financial implications are usually one of the biggest hurdles to implementation. That’s why it’s important to explore all the variables that go into achieving cost savings with single-use devices and assessing that shift within the context of other healthcare paradigm shifts. In this conversation, four experts do exactly that by explorin...
How Effective is Flexible Ureteroscope Reprocessing?
August 18, 2022 15:33 - 9 minutes - 14.3 MBWhen the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a letter to healthcare providers in April 2021 announcing its investigation into numerous medical device reports involving reprocessed urological endoscopes, Dr. Seth Bechis and his colleagues set out to learn more about reprocessing and its effectiveness. They focused on flexible ureteroscopes in their research and found that, while studies assessing the effectiveness of on these specific scopes is limited, their findings line up with re...
Becoming a Next-Gen Urologist
August 04, 2022 15:21 - 14 minutes - 20.3 MBMatthew Katz was at Weill Cornell Medicine when a chance digital encounter ended up steering him into urology. “If you had asked me what a urologist did before medical school I probably wouldn’t have been able to answer the question,” he told me self-deprecatingly when we chatted at the American Urological Association’s annual conference in New Orleans. But a blast email to the entire medical school looking for people interested in robotics research caught Katz’s eye. His background in b...
Mentoring and Empowering Women in Endoscopy, Part 2
July 21, 2022 12:38 - 16 minutes - 22.2 MBEmpowering women in endoscopy is something Dr. Arthi Sanjeevi is clearly passionate about. It shows in her work mentoring young gastroenterologists and in the way she tackles gender-related challenges in the field. In this conversation, Dr. Sanjeevi discusses what’s missing when it comes to empowering women in gastroenterology, and what still needs to be done to bring more female physicians into the practice, especially advanced therapeutic endoscopy. Sanjeevi is based in Tampa, Florida,...
Mentoring and Empowering Women in Endoscopy
July 07, 2022 12:07 - 15 minutes - 20.7 MBDr. Arthi Sanjeevi remembers a fellowship during her residency, when a mentor played a key role in helping guide her career path. Seeing her passion for therapeutic endoscopy — and her ability to perform the complex procedures — he gave Sanjeevi the push she needed. Dr. Sanjeevi does the same today for the residents she mentors. This is particularly important for female gastroenterologists, because studies show that even as female medical graduates outnumber males in every country except J...
The State of Bladder Cancer Awareness and Research
June 02, 2022 13:01 - 12 minutes - 18.1 MBMay was Bladder Cancer Awareness Month, so we wanted to share a conversation with Dr. Yair Lotan on the state of bladder cancer awareness and research, his work with the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network, and some of the advancements in bladder cancer research that most excite him. Dr. Lotan is a urology professor and chief of urologic oncology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He’s known nationally for his research on urine markers and molecular markers, ...
Study Probes FDA Adverse Event Data Tied to Flexible Endoscopes
May 05, 2022 13:07 - 28 minutes - 40.7 MBA comprehensive review and analysis of adverse event reports involving flexible endoscopes filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows a marked increase for six types of scopes from 2014 through 2021. The analysis was undertaken by Dr. Larry Muscarella, president of LFM Healthcare Solutions and an independent safety expert who advises hospitals, manufacturers and the public about medical device safety and the causes of infections in healthcare facilities. Muscarella combed through ...
How Single-Use Cystoscopes Solved Continuation of Care Challenges from Major Floods
April 07, 2022 13:15 - 15 minutes - 22.4 MBA storm dumped three to five inches of rain in the Detroit metro area one day in June 2021, and a major flood forced a Michigan urology clinic to close. Urologists with Henry Ford Health System were forced to quickly pivot and take all their patients coming in for clinic appointments and procedures and push them to a downtown Detroit campus. Single-use cystoscopy technology enabled them to do just that. Dr. Craig Rogers explains how in the latest episode of Endoscopy Insights. What happene...
The Economics of Cystoscopy
March 03, 2022 13:43 - 15 minutes - 22.6 MBA micro-cost analysis published in Urology broke down per-procedural costs for cystoscopy and explored how single-use cystoscopes might provide a cost-effective option for providers. One of the authors of that study, Dr. Yair Lotan, is our guest on the newest episode of Endoscopy Insights and he walks us through his findings. Factors such as capital equipment costs, labor, and supply costs, as well as the number of procedures performed each year, impact the price of cystoscopy. Dr. Lotan i...
Let’s Talk About Efficiency in Flexible Endoscopy
February 03, 2022 13:28 - 12 minutes - 18.7 MBImproving workflows to better meet your patients where they are — whether they find themselves in an ICU bed or at a satellite clinic — is something all patients and providers can be happy about. As we learn from two clinicians in this episode, when they have equipment that is portable, easily deployed, and does not require sterilization between uses, they can cut down on procedural delays.
Ergonomics Challenges in GI Endoscopy
January 06, 2022 13:52 - 21 minutes - 31.6 MBDr. Marybeth Spanarkel loved the “immediate gratification” in performing a colonoscopy or upper GI endoscopy and getting an immediate answer to a medical question. Unfortunately, she had to step away from the field after 28 years in private practice in Durham, North Carolina, after a career-ending neck injury that caused sudden paralysis in her right arm. That musculoskeletal injury brought her career to an end, but it was the catalyst sending her down a new path — keeping other GI endosco...
Study: Single-Use Bronchoscope Can Reduce Readmission Rates, Infection Risk
December 02, 2021 12:41 - 15 minutes - 22.8 MBHospitals that perform bronchoscopies can reduce readmission rates by over half, and potentially lower costs, by adopting single-use flexible bronchoscopes. That’s according to a new abstract that was submitted and presented at the recently completed CHEST 2021 annual meeting. The study examined the health outcomes of more than 14,000 patients who underwent a bronchoscopy procedure and found that sterile, single-use bronchoscopes reduced the re-admissions rate 53 percent, from 7.7 percent ...
The Evolution of Single-Use Urologic Endoscopy
November 04, 2021 13:02 - 17 minutes - 25.6 MBA recent study conducted at Duke University Hospital and published in the Journal of Endourology found that a new single-use cystoscope demonstrated superior flexion and comparable optics to the reusable scopes already being used in a hospital urology department. Dr. Michael Lipkin, a urologist in Durham, North Carolina, and one of the study’s authors, joined Endoscopy Insights to discuss the findings. In our conversation, he talks about the key technological capabilities of the cystoscop...
Best Practices in Endoscope Reprocessing
September 20, 2021 16:31 - 19 minutes - 27.9 MBThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed in a letter to healthcare providers that it’s investigating numerous medical device reports describing patient infections and other possible contamination issues potentially associated with reprocessed urological endoscopes. Dr. Larry Muscarella delves into more detail on reprocessing best practices and some of the challenges therein. He also shares his key takeaways from the FDA letter — for clinicians, regulators and healthcare consumers alike.
FDA Investigating Reports of Infections Associated with Reprocessed Urological Endoscopes
September 20, 2021 16:27 - 13 minutes - 19.4 MBThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating “numerous” medical device reports (MDRs) describing patient infections and other possible contamination issues possibly associated with reprocessed urological endoscopes. Dr. Larry Muscarella, an independent safety expert who advises hospitals, manufacturers and the public about medical device safety and infection prevention, talks about the letter to healthcare providers from the FDA. He also breaks down what it means, what surprised hi...
The FDA’s Safety Communication Update for Reprocessing Bronchoscopes
September 20, 2021 16:22 - 18 minutes - 25.5 MBThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently updated a safety communication on reprocessing flexible bronchoscopes. In that update, the FDA recommends, among other things, that healthcare providers consider using single-use bronchoscopes when there is increased risk of spreading infection and when treating COVID-19 patients. To break down this announcement and what it means, we talked to Dr. Hudson Garrett, an infection prevention and control expert who is sought after for strategic insigh...
Infection Control Risks and Endoscopy
September 20, 2021 16:12 - 20 minutes - 29.4 MBWhat are the challenges, and potential missteps, when it comes to reprocessing bronchoscopes, GI endoscopes and ureteroscopes? How have guidelines and standards evolved? And how has COVID-19 flipped the script when it comes to pursuing evidence-based strategies to eliminate infections related to endoscopes? We explore these questions and more with Dr. Hudson Garrett, CEO of Community Health Associates LLC in Atlanta and co-founder of the nonprofit Infection Prevention Institute.