Lion’s Den Result

The fantastic microstudy presentations from yesterday culminated this morning with the results.

The exceptionally high standard of all the studies made the judging challenging.

In Oscars-style, Antonio and Jean-Leon announced the winners.

Mela from the Philippines with her innovative stoma study came first.

Rachel from South Africa with her burns study was second.

A three way tie for third, saw Wale (laparoscopy and surgical site infection), Ahmad (periop pain), and Vanessa (Malawi)/JC (Rwanda)(WHO checklist) all widely supported.

All other studies still have the opportunity for future support.

Guideline voting

Online voting was used as new innovative approach to engaging surgeons across the world. Existing guidelines in wound infection were voted on to identify the most feasible measures to reduce surgical site infection in resource poor settings.

Tom Pinkney led the session with a cool head. The session led to clear and feasible recommendations which will be developed into essential guidelines. A new frontier for GlobalSurg!

Trials forum

These exciting sessions discussed a number of up and coming trials.

FALCON is our RCT to reduce surgical site infection. It continues to make excellent progress and will start recruiting shortly.

CRANE is an innovative perioperative trial of a nutritional intervention for patients undergoing cancer surgery. Sorrel Burden presented the feasibility study which will run in Ghana, Pakistan, Philippines, Zambia and beyond. We are delighted that this has received support with a MRC GCRF award.

CHEETAH is a step-wedged randomised control trial again orientated towards reducing wound infection. There was a lot of support for this innovative design from collaborators.

The perioperative group have made great strides with the PENGUIN study. This will examine perioperative oxygen use and chlorhexidine mouthwash in a 2×2 design. Bruce Biccard and Janet Martin have done an amazing job steering this development.

GlobalSurg 3 results

Riinu Ots presented the amazing GlobalSurg 3 analysis app. This has proven revolutionary as the data were visualised live, answering questions from the audience directly. Even Richard Lilford was amazed by this!

The session culminated in an exciting summary by Ewen Harrison, who followed up with the highlights of an initial analysis. The data is incredible and highlights interesting disparities in the surgical care of cancer patients across the world.

Everyone was pretty tired at the end of this great but intense day. We look forward to delivering the education sessions tomorrow and meeting our Rwandan colleagues at the university and hospital.