Surgery for the future - enhancing function !

Typically surgery , has always been about correcting anatomical problems. If you broke a bone , the doctor joined it for you; if you had a tumour, he cut it out; and if you had an abscess , he drained it. In the future , surgery will become much more exciting , because rather than focus on fixing problems, clever surgeons and biomedical scientists will create procedures which will enhance function in normal people.Thus, for example , functional neurosurgery will allow normal people to improve their memory while phonic surgery on the vocal cords will allow people who have a good voice to make it even better because of surgical intervention. This is a very tempting concept , because people prefer shortcuts and even though everyone understands that it's possible to improve your memory by studying harder; and that you can improve your voice by taking speech classes and practicing , this is not something which most people are willing to do because they don’t want to invest so much effort . If the surgeon can offer a safe and convenient shortcut which works , lots of people will be willing to pay for this.There’s lots of money in this approach – and in one sense, this is a natural evolution. For example , when pharmaceuticals were first discovered , they were used to treat the sick. If someone had malaria , you treated them with antimalarials . Now, however, we use pharmaceuticals in order to enhance lifestyle quality , so we use drugs to improve people’s sexual performance...
Source: The Patient's Doctor - Category: Obstetricians and Gynecologists Tags: surgeons future of surgery Source Type: blogs