[Improvising, innovating and experimenting in surgery. A serious problem without ethical regulation in current...

This article analyses three terms that are often cited in the current surgical literature: improvisation, innovation and surgical research. Each one has a totally different definition yet in our daily practice terms are often confused and even used as synonyms. A wide variety of novel technical procedures are developed and sometimes published without being first subjected to rigorous peer review. These results sometimes are a by-product of improvisation. Often, these new techniques have undoubtedly contributed to the progress of surgery but in other cases, measured in the immediate or long terms, side effects have become unpredictable and have caused serious harm. In this article, I carried out a review of the literature with the aim of proposing a more rigorous approach for the publication of research results in the changing field of surgery