Scarless Surgery Uses Pre-existing Openings

When Albert Pagliuca got gallstones, his surgeon offered to remove his gallbladder with a new operation designed to hurt less, get him back to work more quickly and leave no visible scars. But there was one catch: Doctors would pull the organ out through his mouth.

It's potentially a very big deal," said Nathaniel J. Soper, who chairs the surgery department at Northwestern University. "This could be the endpoint in innovation, going from big incisions to little incisions to no incisions at all, which is the Holy Grail when things have to be removed from the body."

"That's exactly what's going to happen," said Ira J. Kodner, a surgery professor and a bioethicist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Those who haven't been trained are going to go out and do it. They are going to take a weekend course and start offering it. It's going to happen. I guarantee it.

David Cronin, an associate professor of surgery at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is especially concerned that non-surgeons will start doing the operations. He said: "Not every idea is a good idea. I've been following this one with clenched teeth."